 Welcome to the FAA Production Studios and the FAA Safety Team's National Resource Center. I'm your host, Walt Shammel, and our next presenter lives in Utah, currently has three of his seven children in college, so he needs a job. He says he keeps photos of his children in his wallet, right where he used to keep money. He believes in the future of aviation lies in the hands of today's flight instructors. He has produced and presented several programs for the flight instructor industry. He's been with the FAA over 12 years and is currently the assistant outreach manager for the FAA Safety Team. He holds an ATP certificate with single and multi-engine airplane, hot air balloon, and a master's degree in business administration. His topic today is the Wings Program. Let's welcome our next presenter, Brian Neville. Thank you. Well, I'm happy to be here today, and the first thing I look at is a computer that has critical AVG security warning. I hope we can get rid of that. There we go. All right. We're going to talk about the Wings Pilot Proficiency Program today. This is something that has evoked a lot of emotional response. It's a great concept. It's a great idea, and we believe that we really are making a difference in the safety of aviation. Unfortunately, we've discovered that the interface, the computer interface, could be better. And we have heard you say that. We've listened to you. We've recorded your observations, and we're going to make some changes this summer. So I'm going to talk today about the Wings Pilot Proficiency Program the way it is, and then near the end of my presentation, I'm going to tell you a few of the things that we're going to do to make it better, and I think you're going to appreciate that. Someone needs to tell me how to use the computer down here so that we can program to the next screen because it is not moving. Oh, you have to love computers. And didn't I just tell you that this is an automated system? You remember the old story about the couple that got on the airline, and as they were settling into their seat, the announcement came over. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You have boarded the first totally automated flight, and we're going to be leaving from Los Angeles in just a few minutes for New York, and absolutely nothing can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong, can go wrong, can go wrong. All right, so now it should work, I'm told. There we go. We're going to talk about the philosophy of the Wings Program, who the target audience is, what the real goal is, what some of the requirements are. We're going to describe it through a little bit. The interface is where we have a challenge, and we're going to talk about how we're going to modify that. And then, of course, the entire reason for having a Wings Program. You all know it's a voluntary program. We don't force you to sign up for Wings. We hope you will. We know that you'll be a better pilot. You'll be a more knowledgeable pilot. You'll be a safer pilot when you participate in the Wings Program. And that, after all, is the goal of the Wings Program, being a safer airman. So first and foremost, Wings is a tool to mitigate aircraft accidents. It is also a recurrent training program for general aviation pilots. It's a way to keep your head in flying, so to speak. And now, who can participate? Well, you can see the list here. Airline transport pilots, commercial pilots, private, sport, recreational pilots, even student pilots can participate. And they earn a phase of Wings when they pass their check right for their practical test. Now, what categories and classes of aircraft are there? All of them. Multi-engine land and sea, single-engine land and sea, gliders, lighter than air, airships and balloons, powered parachutes, gyroplanes, helicopters, and even weight shift control. All of these categories and classes are included in the Wings Pilot Proficiency Program. I'm wondering how we're going to incorporate the new pilot certificate that is out here in the distant future. Any guesses what that might be? How would you like to hold your commercial astronaut certificate? That may be in the near future. Well, a question I get a lot is, why did we change the program? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One is, the old program, the old Wings program, it was an awards program. And we started to notice a decline in participation. Not quite sure why that was happening, but we were seeing a decline. And I'm told that 2% of eligible airmen participated the last full year that that program was available. And so we hope with our emphasis on preventing accidents and accident causal factors that we'll see an increased participation in the Wings program. Another reason is, the old program being an awards program, you would go fly, attend a seminar, and get a set of wings. There really was no standard of performance. And while it was good and great to get pilots back in an airplane and fly with an instructor, there wasn't a standard established. Now in this new program, there is a proficiency standard. And that is the practical test standard. And at the basic level, it's generally the private pilot level. So it's not very challenging for your typical commercial and ATP. And the typical private pilot that got his or her license ten years ago, shouldn't be a problem. Why? Because you're ten years better than you were when you took your check ride. Right, okay, right. Now someone has asked me, well, in the old program, we only had to fly three hours. Now in this new program, we have to fly until we're proficient. And I say, well, that's true. But being proficient may only take a demonstration in the last 20 minutes instead of an hour. And so there is a benefit right off the bat. It doesn't necessarily take as much time, and that translates to money. It doesn't take as much money. And I understand that if you're not proficient, it's going to take you a little while to get proficient. But what's our goal? A better, safer pilot. And that's accomplished in that. The other thing is, the FAA gave us a mandate to automate the system. Here's another reason why the Wings program is changing and why it's changed and why we continue to promote the Wings program. It turns out the reason I have this photograph is because I was the investigator in charge of this accident. Pilot had made a trip back and forth a few times to his grandmother's house. And then he got married and wanted to take his new wife to see grandmother on Christmas. So they did that. The only problem was there was weather at the arrival airport. So he had to fly for about 45 minutes longer than normal. And on the way back, he ran out of gas. By the way, he is about 20 miles short of the airport here. He landed across the furrows because his first choice for a landing spot turned out not to be acceptable when he got down low. He broke his neck. Wife got out with no injuries whatsoever. Today, he is a safer and better pilot. He volunteers to make presentations about his experiences. And he's a proponent of pre-flight planning, I'll tell you. He is now. Here's another reason. Difficult to see, but in this picture, there's an airplane as well as the semi-tractor. This is the case where there was an instructor on board. And the reason it burned is because they only ran out of gas out of one tank. The other fuel tank was full. And this is a complete airplane. I like to say it's 30 feet, turned into three feet of metal. So whose fault is it? Is it the pilot's fault? Is it the previous CFI's fault? Is it the weather briefer's fault? Maybe the FBO was at fault in this case. Or was it the manufacturer? Well, we all know whose fault it really is, in almost all cases, right? Yeah, statistically, it is the pilot's fault. It really is. This was a case of continued VFR into IMC. And you can tell from that picture, if you look closely, that this airplane is nosed into the ground, probably as the result of a spin incident. All right, here's a good trend line. We like this trend. You notice back in 1986, there were over 2,500 general aviation accidents. That number is now below 1,500 general aviation accidents. And there's slightly less, well, let's see, there's about slightly less than 300 fatal accidents. So what a significant improvement in our statistics. But as you all know, if there's one accident, that's one too many. So we want that trend, that line to continue, it's declined. We'd like to steepen it so it goes down at a much greater rate. So some of the incentives for participation in the New Wigs program. First and foremost, in my mind anyway, is the pilot becomes more proficient. Not only in the flight activities, where you actually demonstrate what you can or cannot do. But in the knowledge areas. Statistically, we find that many accidents, even though they're caused by something that happens in flight, it was precipitated by something that happened on the ground. So the knowledge areas are very important. And by the way, when we designed the New Wigs program, we examined all of the aircraft accidents that occurred in the United States for the previous, I was going to say, 18 months, but maybe it was 24 months, now I don't remember. But it was a long period of time. And we examined every one of those accidents. It took a long time. We examined them by category and by class and pilot certificates. So we're able to really look very, very well into who committed the accident, what caused the accident, what kind of aircraft it was. And we've got all of that worked out. Now, consistent and organized recurrent training is something that airline pilots do on a regular basis. But what about the general aviation pilot? If you aren't really motivated to go fly on a regular basis, you rationalize that, well, when my flight reviews do, I'll get some training. But please keep in mind, a flight review requires how much flight time? Just an hour. And for many people who don't fly during a particular season of the year, an hour is not enough to get back up to speed. So in the pilot proficiency program as designed, it does require proficiency. Now, when you complete a phase of wings, here's another incentive for participation. It satisfies the requirement for a flight review. And that's shown in FAR part 6156E. And of course, you also get a nice set of wings. Let me show you what that set of wings looks like. Oh, wait, that's the old set right there. Sorry. Here's what they look like today. And we thank a Vemco insurance company for being the provider of these wings at no cost to every pilot that completes a phase of wings. So this is very nice. Well, I want to indicate a little bit of the process now for wings. The basic phase of wings is completed first. Kind of makes sense. But you can work on the advanced phase and the master phase at the same time or even sooner. But you must complete the basic phase first. And the reason for that is this. The basic phase is designed around the primary accident causal factors. In other words, when we examined all of these aircraft accidents, we picked out the primary causal factor. And we made a list. And it turned out that our list was really very short. There really are only four primary causal factors for aircraft accidents. And I'll talk about those in just a moment. Now, let me talk about the basic requirements. At the basic phase, if you can fly to the private pilot practical test standards skill level, you're a safe pilot for most general aviation flying. So the basic phase is designed around the private pilot PTS standards. Now, if you hold a sport pilot certificate, then you can build your wings program around the sport pilot requirements. And if you're a recreational pilot, then you can build your training around the recreational pilot skills. And then you follow a track from the basic to the advanced to the master that keeps you in that particular track. Private pilots, commercial pilots, and ATPs at the basic level meet the private pilot practical test standards. The advanced phase, generally speaking, are designed at the commercial pilot level. Now, again, let's say that you start as a sport pilot. Well, now when you go to the advanced phase, now you move up to the private level if you're a sport pilot. So you can see how it's progressive. It builds upon the previous level. Then the master phase, generally speaking, are at the commercial instrument pilot level. But it may include ATP items or instructor tasks as well. Again, it depends on category and class of aircraft. There are two credit tracks. One is a knowledge track. One is a flight track. Knowledge, of course, being those ground subjects that you are familiar with. Now, flight activities generally are conducted in an aircraft. Some flight activities can be conducted in a simulator when it's approved. And you can read the practical test standards to find out when those activities are approved. So six credits are required each year for each phase of wings. Now, someone has asked me, well, can I complete a phase of wings in March and then come back in October and complete a phase of wings? And the answer is yes. Of course you can. The more often that you're in an airplane practicing what you need to practice, the safer pilots you are. We don't want to restrict that in any way. In fact, here near the end of my presentation, I'll tell you about a possible revision that's going to enhance even that requirement. Now, we break those requirements down to core subject areas and elective subject areas. The core subject areas are those items that we, the FAA, the FAA safety team, absolutely require you to complete before you earn that phase of wings. In other words, we've looked at the primary accident causal factors. And we've said, if we're going to help pilots not use this item to go have an accident, we've got to have them be aware of that. For example, one of them is landings. Some accidents happen because of poor landing techniques, whether it's a tailwind, a crosswind, bouncing, porpoising, go-arounds, or another issue. The more you practice those items, the better pilot you become and the safer pilot you become. So we call those core items. Those are the things that we really want you to practice on and demonstrate proficiency. The elective items, the elective tasks, again, they are accident causal factors. But they're the ones that show up as also runs in the accident report. And so we give you a big list of things to choose from. And that way you can kind of develop your training program around your kind of flying. For example, if you fly in Colorado, you're going to want to think about mountain flying. But if you fly in Kansas, and that's the only place you fly, I'm not sure how tall the mountains are in Kansas. But they're not the same as the mountains are in Colorado. So you get a chance to design your training program. There are lots of activities or lots of tasks that can qualify in the Wings program. We have different kinds of activities, seminars. We have online courses. We're trying to add more and more online courses all the time. In fact, at 1 o'clock today, there's a group of us getting together. And we're going to preview a new online course on performance and limitations. And we're excited about that because it's a thorough examination of performance and limitations. This, again, is a primary causal factor for accidents. And so we're excited to have this new course up on our site. And I'm hoping to get that approved this week. There are other events, and of course, third party courses. Now, one of the things that the FAA safety team decided to do to improve the Wings program and to improve FAASafety.gov, our website. And overall, to improve the effectiveness of the safety team, is we team with industry members of Vemco as an insurance company. Sporty's is not only a provider of products, but also a school, SIMCOM, flight safety, SIMU flight, ASA. I know I'm leaving others out. But all of these third party individuals and companies are providing courses for us. Some of them are no cost items, and some have a fee attached. But you can see that on the site. Now, here's a visual representation of the Wings program. You can see that in the basic phase, there's a knowledge track and a flight track. Let's see. I can get a pointer here. Here's the knowledge track. And there are three credit items available in the knowledge track. Here in the flight track, there are three credit areas available. You can see that two are core subject areas, and one elective in each of those tracks. In fact, if you go down and look at the advanced phase, it's the same basic concept. Here at the advanced phase, we have one core subject and two elective subjects, so a little bit more latitude at the advanced level, and pretty similar at the master phase level. Same outline, knowledge and track, three credits of knowledge, three credits of flight, and you have a core subject and elective subject required. Here's what it looks like overall, the basic advanced and master phase. Here's what our examination discovered. In the United States over the last 23 months, and this study was accomplished in March, by the way, so it's very current, 86% of the aviation accidents were airplanes. We discovered that 10% of the accidents were helicopters. So now, when we get the question, well, you seem to concentrate on airplanes a lot on your website. Why don't you have more gyro planes and light sport aircraft and gyro planes and, well, whatever the list is, sea planes, well, the reason is, 96% of the accidents in the United States over the last 23 months were by airplanes and helicopters and 86% airplanes. So that's why we seem to concentrate on that demographic, if you will. Now, does that mean that we're ignoring the others? No. We have a hot air balloon online courses, a matter of fact, on FASafety.gov. And we're looking all the time, looking for new courses to put up on FASafety.gov that can address the other categories and classes of aircraft. In fact, if you are interested in helping us produce or develop an online course, send me an email at an email address, wingscoursesupportatfasafety.gov. If you're interested in helping develop an online course, it's not difficult. Just send me an email at wingscoursesupportatfasafety.gov and we'll talk about it. Maybe we can get something put together. Well, where do you start with Wings program? It starts at fasafety.gov. Here's what our homepage looks like. There's a link there that says getregisteredwithfasafety.gov. That's the first thing you need to do. I get the question all the time, well, why do I have to register? Why do I have to give the FAA my email address? Well, here's the reason. If you take an online course, we want you to have credit for that course. And the only way we can do that is to identify you in some way. And so on fasafety.gov, accounts use email addresses as identification. And so that's why we ask you to register so that we can keep track of your accomplishments. And I'm gonna show you a little bit how that is displayed to you as a user. When you register, this is the new page that will show up. We're hoping sometime in early May. It doesn't look exactly like this right now, but it's very similar. We're adding additional information that makes it more user friendly. You can see that you can choose between an HTML, email, or a plain text email. And basically what that means to you is if we send you a picture, you won't get it in the plain text email. But if you check HTML and your email reader allows that, then you'll be able to see the pictures that we send to you. Also, notice the email notification preferences at the bottom of this screen, the general account preferences screen. You can tell us what preferences you have, what interest areas you have so that when you get an email, it's really the email that you want to see. Now it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, if you uncheck all those boxes, you won't get very many emails from us. In fact, pretty close to zero. And so that's your opportunity to tell us what you want to get via email. And you can see there's a lot of different areas there. If there are any designated pilot examiners in the audience are listening, we've created a new interest area for you. If you would go check that, we would appreciate it. That way we can direct specific designated pilot information, pilot examiner information to you. You can also see what your name is. And in the new program coming out in May, you will be able to say, well, if my name is Brian Neville, I want to be called Wesley. And so Wesley Neville is what will show up as your display name. If your name is James and you want to be called Jim, you can tell us that. If your name is Elizabeth and you want to be called Beth, you can tell us that. And it'll be a little bit more user friendly for you. I also want to point out on this page, right in the middle, there's a tab that says Airman Registry. One of the interesting things is we're all human. The Airman Registry people are human, although they're just great. They keep, boy, two and a half million Airman records. Did you know that? Individual records. But every once in a while, a name will get misspelled. And so on our site, we're going to show you what the Airman Registry shows for your record. And if it's not correct, then we're going to provide a link so that you can go out to the Airman Certification Branch and start the process for getting it fixed. So we're offering that service. I do want to point out that faasafety.gov, since it's a volunteer site, is not a site where you can change your official FAA address. I just want to point that out. All right, to register for the Wings program, right now it's a little bit challenging because you have to know to look under Wings information, which is not very descriptive for signing up for the Wings program. However, in the new program that comes out in the middle of May, the Enhancement, notice it says information and sign up. So it's much more clear which link you click to sign up for the Wings program. Well, how did that show up? Somebody called and said, hey, Mr. Neville, how do I sign up for the Wings program? And I said, well, you go to the Wings program and sign up. And they said, yeah, but there's no link. And I went and looked and said, oh, how about that? I'm so close to the trees, but I didn't see it. So a user comment helped us improve this site. So we do want to encourage these user comments. As a matter of fact, now would be a good time to mention to you that here at Sun & Fun, we've established an FAA safety slash Wings customer service facility. In fact, it's just behind the FAA facility in a trailer. And we have two or three people there all the time this whole week who can help you with FAAsafety.gov and Wings questions. So we invite you to come over and visit us. Anyway, here's a change that's going to be very useful to everyone. Here's what it is now. It says begin participating now. Click that link and you'll be taken to a page where you can tell us what your interest levels are or you can just tell us the pilot certificate and category and class that you hold. Well, let me explain a little bit more about that. If you're a private pilot, you fly airplane, single-engine land, you can check just those two boxes. But let's say that you hope to get a multi-engine rating. And so you want to learn a little bit more about multi-engine airplanes. So you can come over here and check airplane single-engine land and airplane multi-engine land and private pilot. And now you'll get information on both single-engine and multi-engine land ideas when you search the cider or you have a default setup. So it's really your page to tell us what kinds of information you want to look at on our site. Also notice, we give you an opportunity to enter your last flight review date. And after you do that, then we'll keep track of it for you on our site. If you complete a phase of wings, we'll update it for you. If your flight review date was entered by you and you don't complete a phase of wings, then we kind of expect you to keep it up to date. But a future feature, don't you like that alliteration a future feature? We'll look at that date and if it's getting within 30 days of expiration, we'll send you an email. But that's a future feature, okay? Also, if you participated in the Old Wings program, you may want to be able to see that on your FAA Safety.gov account. So we give you a chance to enter your phase that you earned. You click on that, then you click save and then it goes to the next page. This is what I talked about. It's a little bit larger picture, you can check those. All right, this is your My Wings page. When you say it, you say My Wings. But this is your Wings page. And it's broken into a couple of areas. And we've gotten some feedback about this page also. And we are going to simplify this page even more than we have already. But up in the upper left-hand corner, there's a shaded section that gives you a summary. This fellow has a basic phase that expires on 2020-10. Remember that Wings credits expire after one year. And the concept again is, well we know a flight review is 24 months. But the Wings is to encourage you to get back in an airplane. To get back in a knowledge area. So Wings credits expire after one year. And that's just to keep you current. That's to get you back, thinking about airplane stuff and being safe. We have some links here on the right side that will take you to some other pages that will help you accomplish what you want. Then we display your basic phase, your advanced phase and master phase. This little triangle here to the left of the phase name. If you click that, it'll open up that grid or close it so that you can look at one or the other. The default is the basic phase. But the real default is the phase that you're currently working on. So if you finish the basic phase and working on the advanced phase, when you go to your My Wings page, the advanced phase opens up by default. But you can change that by clicking that triangle. And then at the bottom of this page, we have a timeline so that you can see how close your credits are to expiring. You can see in this example, here's a person who's got one credit expiring this month. And this was put together in March, so now of course that credit would have been expired. So that's your Wings page. In your description, if you haven't done anything yet, you just signed up. It's going to say no, no, no, no, no, or NA. But notice the old Wings program gives you a chance to click, let me update that, or I didn't participate. And then we'll keep track of that for you. These tools, I want to point out that there's a little green circle with a question mark in it. Up at the top, there's a kind of a bigger green circle. That's a help file for that page. That contains information that is helpful for this page. The little green circle is it to get started. How do I get started on this page? What do I do to take advantage of the items that are on this page? That's the little circle. We call it to get started. Okay, you can come here and search for activities, or you can come here and search for activities that you want validation of your credit request. You can look at a history. We keep, in your display, we keep 24 months of your history. Our database keeps it for a long time, but the display is just 24 months. Here's what it looks like. Note that this individual has two items that are pending validation. And in this case, it looks like a request was made of these, this individual for this activity and this individual for that activity. At the time this screenshot was made. And then here's the credit history for the previous two years. And you can see it's pretty extensive. If you made a credit request and you discover that the individual old says they're not gonna do it or they've moved on and they're working for an airline now and they just don't have time to fiddle with it, you can come here and delete your credit request so that you can ask someone else to validate your credit. And so that's what that little red X is there for. All right, we've talked about the grids, the basic phase grid here is displayed. Talk a little bit about the things there. The little triangle will open or close that grid. When the green check mark shows up, it means you have already completed that task. If you have the little circle, now someone can help me with what color that is. Is that a salmon colored to you? Something like that. When that shows up, it means you haven't started that activity yet. It's not finished for sure. If you wanna see what is accomplished, you can click on the link that says view earned credits. A new box opens up like this that shows you all of the earned credits in that area. For example, here you can see we clicked on view earned credits for the knowledge elective item at the basic level and here's everything that qualified for that. It's just another phase. If you wanna just go search for activities for that area, click on the binoculars or the little red arrow. Here's another future feature. We're gonna make that whole link, that whole section a link so that you don't have to search out that little red arrow. We'll make that whole area a link so that you just click on it. But again, that's a future feature. Here's what happens when you click that. You can see that there are 89 events available for that KEB credit. Some of them have a half a credit, one credit. Here's a quarter credit. There are 89 of those. It displays 10 of those by default. If you click on this area here, you can display up to 50 items per page. Here's an example of an online course. ALC stands for the Aviation Learning Center. And this is course number 25. You see we have a lot of them displayed here. Here's what that looks like when you click that title. When you just click the title, we don't know if you just wanna look at the course to see if you're interested or if you actually want to enroll. So we take you to the page and tell you that you're previewing the course. You're not enrolled yet. You're just previewing it. You're looking to see if you're interested. If you're interested in enrolling, here's the link. Click here to enroll for this course now. Now you're telling us, yes, I really do wanna take this online course. Here's the link that once you click on it, you can start it and it goes out and finds the course and takes you to it. Now, here's an event or a seminar search. A little bit different. You can search by zip code and radius, miles. You can search by the state. Let's say that here we are in Florida, but you're really from Illinois. So you're visiting Florida for a week and you wanna know what events there might be in Florida where you're visiting. So you come to the search page, you click the down arrow there, enter F-L, or F I mean for Florida, pick it out, click it, and then you can see all of the events that are happening in Florida. So it's very useful wherever you are in the country. You can also, if you know which FAA region you're in, you can search by region. Airport, if the event creator entered an airport identifier, for example, this airport is L-A-L, could be K-L-A-L. Right now you have to know exactly what that is, but a future feature, and that future feature is just a week or two away. You can enter either one and it'll find it for you. Or you can enter a keyword. Let's say you wanna learn something about CFIT, controlled flight into terrain. So you enter CFIT there and then it'll go out and search and find those events that address that subject area. If you only wanna see, well I'm sorry, this is the link for signing up. If you wanna actually register for this event, you click that link and it'll take you out to a sign up page. If you only wanna look at past events, and of course you're saying, well why do I wanna do that? You click, you check this box. Well the reason you might wanna look at a past event, one, you might wanna say, I remember there was an event offered, now I can't find it. Well you can come here and say, ah, it was yesterday. Or it was last week and I just missed it. Or you can click past events and request credit for an event that you attended. And you don't wanna have to look through all of the current events to find it. So you can click only past events. And of course you can click events that you registered for and then only those will show up. So this is very user friendly. We are exploring the future feature of putting in a new box here that will allow you to search by date. So you'd be able to enter a date range and then find those events that fall within that date range. So that'll be very useful also. If you click on the title, it will display information about that title. If you click that link, it'll automatically make an entry in your computer calendar, if you have one. And of course you can see there's a link here that allows you to register online. There's a link at the bottom that says register here. And here's how you look for other activities. Here's what a flight activity looks like. I wanna point out that this particular one is categorized as slow flights, stall and basic instruments. This is a flight activity. It's a core activity and it's at the basic level. So why are there six tasks here? If you think about the private pilot practical test standards in area of operation eight and nine, there are probably 15 tasks. Why do we only include six? I gave you that answer earlier. We don't want you to do more work than necessary or cost you excessive money. If you come and click here and do these six, you have addressed the primary accident causal factors. That's where this list comes from. These are the areas that show up most predominantly in accident reports. You can come to this page, click here and you'll go to the request credit function. You can print this out so that you can take it with you so that you and your instructor know what you're going to have to accomplish. And if your instructor wants to make a logbook entry, here's a suggested logbook entry. Here's the validation page. The date needs to be entered. Notice there's a format for that. And then you can look up validators by the recent ones you've used. You can look up by email address, by their last name, or you can just do a simple search. And the system will find, you click on it, name drops down here, you submit for validation. And then an email goes out to that validator and says, hey, go validate this request for credit. Now a future feature that's coming, if that validator doesn't address your request within 14 days, the system will send them a reminder email. And so that'll resolve some of the issues we have where validators don't go and look and take care of these things very regularly. Here's what it looks like if you're a validator. When you log on, this little triangle is flashing and says you have pending validation requests. Please take care of them. All right, again, the check mark means that it's finished. Now a couple of comments about wing certificates. The way the system was designed, we're gonna address this, but the way it's designed right now, you have to print your completion certificate while your phase is current and valid. Remember I said that wings credits are only good for one year. So if you get a credit in January and a credit in March and a credit in July and a credit in October and another credit in November and the last credit in December, how long is your wings phase going to be valid if you don't do anything else? It's only gonna be good for three months from when you did it in December till the credit completed in March expires. So if you haven't printed your wing certificate during that time and your wings phase goes out of currency, you can't print a certificate because it's not current. We're going to address that. We're gonna have a future feature that may allow us to be able to do that with some date things on it, but it's a future feature. So be sure to print your wing certificate. I recommend that you complete that wing certificate as soon as you complete a phase of wings. Oh, I should mention that because we're automated, I say they're good for a year. They're actually valid for 365 days. Here's what a wing certificate looks like. I wanna point out a couple of things on this. It has your name, it has the phase, and in the fine print it actually tells you when your flight review expires. And you can print this anytime that the wings phase is valid and it'll print the data that's printed. Here's page two. It contains a wallet-sized certificate so you can cut that out, put it in your logbook, or carry it in your wallet, and then it lists every item that you accomplish to complete that phase of wings. Now, how do you get that certificate? See right here where it says get your certificate? You click on that link. Now, earlier I talked about the wings, the nice set of jewelry that you can get. When you complete a phase, you can come to this page, your My Wings page, and click on claim your rewards. And it'll take you to the page where you fill out a brief piece of information and then your wings will be mailed to you. You can also click on team member rewards over here. Now right now, the team member rewards we have are the set of wings. But we're hoping to involve additional industry members and have additional team member rewards. When you achieve a phase of wings, there'll be additional team member rewards that you can ask for. Future feature, right? Here's what it looks like. Notice it says you need at least a basic to request an award. When you have the basic, then it says check here. Just like this. Wings, select the reward. Boom, right there. Okay. So the summary, you must be registered on fa-safety.gov. You have to complete your pilot profile. You accomplish the core activities and the elective activities. Submit credit validation requests when necessary. Remember that online courses give you automatic credit when you complete an online course. Well, by the way, what is the passing score for an online course? Go ahead, tell me what the FA passing score is. It's 100%. We reasoned that why would we send someone out say you've completed a phase of wings if you answered a question wrong? So the first time you go through, if you miss a question, we take you back to it and let you give you another opportunity to answer that question again. Now, you could go click, click, click and get it right if you did it three times. So we're ahead of you. We randomize the answers. So A is not going to be A the next time you come back. It'll be the same question, but A, B and C or D, they won't be the same. So you actually have to know the information. And we like that. I think that's a good validity check on the test. And of course, we then maintain that record. All right. Don't know why that's there, so I'm gonna skip over it. Oh, now I know why it's there. My courses. You can go to the My Courses link and look at a particular course and print that completion certificate anytime you want by clicking on the little icon that looks like a diploma. I get that question a lot. How do I get my certificate? You go to My Courses and click on the diploma. So that's good. Now, AOPA has asked us to remind everyone that when you complete an AOPA course, an online course at their site, or you attend an AOPA seminar, that they want to validate those credits. So we have put that process in our Frequently Asked Questions link at the bottom of every page at faasafety.gov. That way you don't have to worry about what's the process. I went to an AOPA seminar last night. How do I get credit? You go to the Frequently Asked Questions on our page and it outlines the process for you so you can get that credit. And there it is. It says FAQ. It's at the bottom of every page. Well, now, what's next? I only have a few minutes left, but I want to talk about some of the exciting things that we're going to incorporate in the near future. I've told you already what the definition of future feature is, right? Some of these things will happen in a couple of weeks. Some won't happen for several months. So just be patient with us. If you have a suggestion, we want to hear that. In fact, this week, go around to our customer service office and tell us what that suggestion is. We're keeping a list. You can also send us an email, and I'm going to give you that email address before we finish. So one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to continue to simplify and add useful features, not to make it more challenging for you to find something, but the features you've asked for, we want to include. In addition, we're looking at the Wings program. In fact, our project name is called Easy Wings. That's just a project name. We're looking at data. We have some great ideas. They're exciting ideas. I think you're going to like them. We need to involve more instructors. We know that when an instructor is involved, he or she will involve his or her students. And that's what we want, is more people involved in learning how to be a better, safer pilot. We know that the registration procedures have been challenging for some. And so we have already changed that, and we're going to launch that change here in the next couple of weeks. We're excited about that change. Additional online courses, we have more coming. We're excited about that. We invite you, if you're interested, to send that email to me at WingsCourseSupport at faasafety.gov so that we can work with you. So maybe you can provide us an online course. We know that searching for activities and events on the site, it's a little challenging right now. It can be done if you know how to do it, but we're going to simplify that so you can find things much more quickly. And we know that the readability of this site needs improvement. So we're going to make it larger. We're going to make it easier to read. We're excited about that. And then navigation, add somebody right in and say, why should I click four times when you could really make it one time for me to do what I want to do? Well, duh, why don't we do that? So we're going to look at all of the navigation on the site. All right, Wings made easier, easy Wings as I'm calling it, we're hoping that we can develop a system where you just have to click maybe once and you're in the Wings program. Right now, it takes two or three clicks to get there. And we think that we can do it with one click. I'm hoping. We'll see how that works. So we're hoping you click a link, you print a page, you go fly, your instructor gives you credit and you're done. It didn't take much effort on your part at all. We also understand that there are some of you out there listening today that really don't have a computer at home now. For me, that's hard to understand. I thought a computer was a requirement in everybody's home, but apparently it's not. So we're looking at a paper-based method that will allow those few individuals that don't have a computer at home, don't want to use a computer to utilize FASafety.gov and participate, especially participate in the Wings program. You will have to go to someone that has access to a computer, but we're going to help you use a paper-based method. So that should be interesting. Of course, we don't know when that's going to happen. It takes a little bit longer to design those things, but we hope to have an announcement at Oshkosh. We know instructors need to be involved. We're looking at ways to do that. In fact, we've submitted a revision to the inspector handbook that says that CFIs can renew their CFI certificate with Wings participation. We're waiting for that to be approved. As soon as it's approved, then that's going to be very useful to instructors as well. Readability, we know we have to fix that, so we're going to have larger pages, larger font sizes, greater use of white space. We're going to have more concise text and better use of plain English. We're just, in fact, we have someone now, a customer support technician who's going to start looking at these pages and saying, well, gee, that doesn't make sense to me. How about if we did this? So again, we've heard you. We're going to make these changes. Additional safety content is already there. Nuts and boats, newsletters for mechanics is there. Flying lessons is a weekly item that addresses specific accident causal factors. And now, if you are a general user, which most everyone is, send us an email at support at fa-safety.gov. If you have a question or comment, a suggestion. If you have a problem, send us an email at support at fa-safety.gov. If you have specific questions about the Wings program, we have a mailbox, wingsgensupportatfa-safety.gov. And if you have online course questions and suggestions of us, as I've already said, Wings course support at fa-safety.gov. Now, those are the three email boxes. And this is another future feature. We're going to boil that down to one email box. It'll probably say support at fa-safety.gov. And then we'll give you some dropdown choices so you can tell us specifically where your question or comment or suggestion is. So that's another future feature. Well, I'm excited about the Wings program. I'm a big promoter of it. In fact, let me tap myself on the back for a moment. In the old program, I earned phase 20. That's how much I value the Wings program. And I do participate in the new program as well. So I'm very excited about what we're going to be able to do online. And that's all there is. I'd be happy to answer any questions right now. Are there any questions in the audience? We have a microphone, just hold up your hand, and we'll bring a microphone to you. Wow, okay. Don't forget, the customer service office is right behind this building. Come in and talk to us. We'd even like to get your opinion of what's there now. You can give us suggestions. We can just talk to you. And when we talk, we can gather information just from what you're saying. So we're excited about that as well. Well, thank you very much. I encourage all of you who are pilots to sign up and participate in the Wings program. It's a great program. Thank you again. Thank you, Walt. Thank you, Brian. There you are. All right. Well, there weren't any questions because you made it so simple. Straight forward. And it's a lot simpler than the first program that came out. It took 16 different ways to make a simple yes or no statement. It's a lot better. It is easier today, and we're going to make it even easier. That's what's exciting. It's really exciting. Thank you. And you're here to help us, right? I am here to help you. Yes, I wear a white hat. Yes. Well, that's great. Well, folks, we got another show coming up in another 30 minutes. We'll see you then. Thanks again. Staying right here. We're still on camera. I see that. So it is exciting. This keeps you pretty busy, doesn't it? Oh, yes. I was a one man shop three weeks ago. Now I'm on it.