AircraftOwner Online

There was a time when aircraft accidents were most likely fatal. Though too many fatalities still occur, advances in aircraft technology have greatly increased survivability. Now, a crucial safety issue could be post-impact survival. As we saw in the Aug. 9, 2010, accident that killed former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and four others, locating the wreckage and getting first responders on site took almost seven hours. Alaska has lots of remote terrain, but you don’t have to be very far from a major city in the lower 48 to find that weather, terrain, or a number of other factors could delay rescue and leave you to fend for yourself and your passengers until help arrives.

It’s All about Preparedness

What can you do? That’s where the Office of Aerospace Medicine’s Airman Education Program comes in with its specialized training and resources. A basic survival training course, conducted at the FAA’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) in Oklahoma City, Okla., covers survival in desert, arctic, and water environments. CAMI instructors provide two perspectives: how to prepare before the flight and the skills needed to endure environmental extremes.

The one-day course includes discussion of the psychology of survival, aircraft egress, search-and-rescue operations, signaling devices, fire starting/ building, personal survival kits, rafts and accessories, and helicopter pickup devices. Better still, there is a hands-on portion that, depending on availability of personnel/equipment, may include a fire-starting lab, signaling lab, thermal (cold) chamber, ditching tank, underwater egress trainer, and an aircraft emergency evacuation (smoke) simulator. In short, the course gives general aviation pilots and their passengers a thorough grounding in preparing for survival both before and after an aircraft accident.

Know Thyself

CAMI also offers a class on aerospace physiology. This one-day training session includes such topics as physics of the atmosphere, respiration and circulation, decompression, stress, hypoxia, and hyperventilation, among others. In addition to the basic academic contents, this course offers practical demonstrations of rapid decompression (8,000 to 18,000 feet AGL) and hypoxia (25,000 feet AGL) using an altitude chamber. It also includes a demonstration of vertigo, using a spatial disorientation demonstrator.

Each year, CAMI offers more than 170 classes to more than 2,000 people. In addition, the Airman Education Program staff members are working to launch online courses based on the training materials. In the future, this will enable everyone to have access to the courses on www.FAASafety.gov and pilots will be able to get credit in the WINGS pilot proficiency program.

If you cannot make it to Oklahoma, you can still benefit from the information. The FAA has an online library of videos on survival training, aerospace physiology, human factors, and more at: www.faa.gov/pilots/training/airman_education/.

Lastly, one of the best things about all this training, whether in person or online, is that it is free. Whether you come to CAMI in person or visit the Web site, there are resources available. Check it out. You will be glad you did.

Frederick E. Tilton, M.D., M.P.H., received both an M.S. and a M.D. degree from the University of New Mexico and an M.P.H. from the University of Texas. During a 26-year career with the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Tilton logged more than 4,000 hours as a command pilot and senior flight surgeon flying a variety of aircraft. He currently flies the Cessna Citation 560 XL.