Bruce Landsberg, who is joining the NTSB after many years as a safety advocate for general aviation, takes on the job at an interesting moment—advancing technology creates opportunities to improve GA safety, and at the same time, a pilot shortage has led to challenges in the training pipeline. “Good (and young) CFIs are getting picked off by the airlines quickly,” Landsberg said, in an email to AVweb last week.Part of the solution to that challenge may be for GA to make better use of the high-quality simulators that are now available. “The airlines and corporate flight operations learned this more than 40 years ago, and never looked back,” Landsberg said. Cost has been a barrier for using sophisticated sims in GA training, but that’s changing fast as new technology reaches the market.
Other new technologies now in development show promise for improving safety, Landsberg said. “Flight data monitoring is a great idea, and if we can start to retrofit older aircraft with recording equipment, it will make accident investigation much faster and easier,” he said. “By analyzing engine data—and there’s very little on piston engines at this writing—it’s entirely possible to predict well in advance of a catastrophic failure when something is getting out of tolerance. This has worked very well for the airlines, and the technology now makes it possible for light GA.” Landsberg also said he sees great opportunities for improving weather forecasting and the dissemination of accurate and timely weather data into GA cockpits. Besides investigating accidents, the NTSB works to analyze accident data to identify areas that need improvement, and promotes safer practices across all modes of transportation. “This will be a most interesting assignment,” Landsberg said.
