Dennis Ward of Fairbanks has been named by the foundation's board of directors as its new Executive Director. Dennis has been with the program for four years as an Evalutor and TapRoot instructor.

"I am a great believer in luck, the harder I work the more I have of it." Luck is certainly a determining factor in accident statistics and I believe the harder we work to make our operation safer, the luckier we will be. 

I recently was talking to an operator that didn't belong to the Medallion.  When I asked him why not he replied that his company hadn't had an accident in over 10 years.  He said that he thought he operated a safe company and that signing on with the Medallion would require more work and expense.  He didn't think he would have any accidents soon, so, he believed he didn't need to work any harder to promote safety.

I believe he does operate a fairly safe company, by most standards.  Is not having an accident in 10 years a good measurement and forecast of how he will fare in the future?  Probably not.  Could he improve his odds of remaining accident-free by getting even one star?  Without a doubt. 

NIOSH, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health contracted ISER, Institute of Social and Economic Research, to do a study on the effectiveness of the FAA Safety Initiative and the other two Alaskan safety programs, Capstone and the Medallion Foundation. The study is called Evaluation of the Alaska Interagency Safety Initiative.  The study found "During the past 15 years, the total number of aviation accidents and the number of fatal accidents have both declined by nearly 50 percent."  The greatest reduction, of course, has been in the last 5 years.  The commercial aviation in Alaska had a 27 month span with no fatalities.  That was the first time since statistics were taken that Alaska commercial aviation went a whole year without a fatality.  The average was five fatal accidents a year with an average of 15 fatalities.

ISER found that the separate effects of the different programs were difficult to differentiate with the exception of the Medallion program. "We interpret the finding to say that the practices that the Medallion program recognizes are, as a whole, associated with safer flying."  They also pointed out that, "The Medallion stars are associated with a lower probability of an accident."  The more stars you have, the luckier you are.

On his comment regarding expense, I did a cost benefit analysis for the company I worked for and published it in a Medallion Newsletter on April 2006.  It was a five year analysis and showed substantial savings for the company over what had been spent on the program, it also showed a reduction in workman's comp accidents of 62% and a reduction in smaller mishaps.

Luck is certainly a player in accidents, but there are a lot of things we can do to improve our odds.  The Medallion offers some of the "best practices" known to our industry.  The more we do, the luckier we get.

In partnership with the Alaska Region FAA the CFI/DPE Initiative Program was established for two primary reasons: a) To provide an opportunity and forum for CFI's, DPE's, and other aviation stakeholders to collaborate and provide input towards developing and implementing intervention strategies aimed at reducing general aviation accidents and b) To ensure intervention strategies and corrective actions are moved forward and completed. 

 
The project involves a three-step process:

1.      Using portions of the TapRoot ® analysis process to review Alaskan aviation accidents and determine the root causes of those accidents.

2.      Transforming stakeholder input into interventions, corrective actions, and associated training scenarios designed to address the root causes.

3.      Implementing the training scenarios for utilization in our 3-axis motion Piper Cub simulator and making the scenarios available for CFI's and their student pilots.

The over-riding theory of the CFI/DPE program is to reduce general aviation accidents through more focused aeronautical decision making, a better understanding and application of practical test standards (PTS) for pilot certificates, and viewing the PTS as a minimum standard applicable before and after the checkride.