The FAA recently published a story noting how pilots across the country are flying more safely with help from the agency’s educational video series “From The Flight Deck.”
“Pilots and flight instructors are tapping into this resource to fly safely and educate trainees, evidenced by the 1 million-plus views to the series on YouTube,” officials noted.
“Pilots are visual learners, and this reaches the core of how they learn,” said Cary Grant, an FAA Safety Team representative and aeronautical science professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott Campus in Arizona. “I’m a big user of the From the Flight Deck videos for myself and for my students in lessons. To teach them without the picture, it doesn’t really become a learning experience like this.”
According to FAA officials, the video series provides pilots with actual runway approach and airport taxiway footage captured with aircraft-mounted cameras. The videos also incorporate diagrams and graphics to identify hot spots and point out other hazards like potentially confusing intersections, the location of hold short lines, or unique attributes of the runway safety area that pilots need to watch out for at airports.
For the series, which debuted in 2020, the FAA prioritizes airports that see the most pilot errors and runway safety events relative to their total number of flights.
An FAA pilot flies to these airports with cameras attached to a Cessna 210 Centurion. His camera setup delivers footage that shows what the flight looks like from his view at the controls of the plane.
The series is helping pilots of all ages fly safer, FAA officials noted.
Jaden Gitlow, a 21-year-old, third-generation pilot and student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said he referenced the videos dozens of times when training for his private pilot certificate and still does. He told FAA officials the Phraseology video is his “go-to” resource for flying around Massachusetts.
For Mary Build, chief flight instructor at Eastern Slope Aviation Academy in Fryeburg, Maine, the Winter Weather Challenges video is one she shows her students.
“As an instructor and pilot, these videos are wonderful assets,” she noted.
So far, there are 141 videos in the series, with most of them focusing on a specific general aviation airports, such as Hayward Executive Airport in California, Bowman Field in Kentucky, and many more.
There are also videos looking at Human Factors, Line Up and Wait, and more.
You can find the full list of videos here.
