 Welcome back, everyone, to Sun & Fun 2008. Years ago, about 1975, my husband brought home a microwave and expected me to feel grateful. I was not grateful. Because I saw it as something new I had to learn and something I didn't want to learn. I already knew how to cook without a microwave. Jim Piles is an extraordinary man. He's our speaker today. Jim is the lead project manager for the Wings program and it's called the Pilot Proficiency Program and it's called that for a very good reason. We've discovered that pilots learn and pilot survive when they are proficient in their piloting skills. And this program is a new program and it requires an adjustment. In some ways, an adjustment similar to the one I had to make with the microwave oven. The first thing I did with the microwave oven is try and do something the microwave was not designed for so it was a dismal failure. And that meant that I was right. I didn't need a microwave oven. So that first failure approved to me that I was right. In truth, I prefer to live life with a microwave oven. It's turned out to be a very good idea. Jim Piles has brought something to us that is new to the aviation. We are interfacing with you in a web application that once we get through the learning curve we actually produce a service for pilots that benefits all of us. Safety is our reason for being here. Survival and joy of flying. Mr. Piles is going to take us through the microwave transition. So would you please welcome Mr. Jim Piles. Thank you. Appreciate it very much. Well, welcome everybody. I hope you're having a good time here at Sun and Fun. I got in late last night and I was driving in. There was a nice lake off to the right of the freeway there as I was headed westbound and I had to slow up a little bit to watch a couple of people land their aircraft out there in the lake. It's just absolutely beautiful. And I hope everybody's here and having a good time today. We do have an important thing to talk about today and that is the Wings program. So if I could just buy a show of hands of the people here in the audience, how many of you participated in the Wings program, Wings Pilot Award program? How many? So it looks like about 90% or so out there. Okay, great. So let me ask a couple other questions here. How many of you received, let's say, face 10 or above of the old program? Okay, I see four hands, okay? We're going to get scary here. How about 15 or above? I see two. Now it's a contest. So let's jump to 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. We have a 19 and a 20. There you go. Now, that's pretty good, isn't it? I mean, that's a real good program. Did you like the old program? I see some yeses and I see some nodding of heads. I know those of you that are out there in the camera world can't see that, but that's great. Most people did like the old program. How many pilots do you think we have out there that are active pilots according to the registry? Any guesses out there? We have 200,000. We have 100,000. 400,000. So the guesses are up there. We actually have about 860,000 active airmen of which about 680,000 we consider active pilots in the pilot regime. So 680,000 active pilots. Now how many in 2005 do you think participated in the old awards program out of 680,000? How many do you think participated and got a phase of wings officially from that program? I hear less than 3%. That's really good. It was about 2.5%, about 17,050 if you want to have the exact number. And the percentage would fluctuate based on the number of airmen that we had in the database at that time, which is slightly different than what we have today. 17,050 people. Well, I'm happy to say that we started a new program with the wings. And we took all the good things from the old program and we added some value-added items, if you will, to the new program. First of all, we took out the word award because we feel the best reward that you will get in participating in a new program is a higher level of proficiency. Now, again, I'm going to ask some questions and I'll repeat what I hear out here in the audience because I think it's important for us to understand the old program when we have so many people in the audience that have participated in it because we want to compare that program with the new program because we've had a lot of people come to us and say, you know, this new program is just way too difficult. It's way too much to do. And I'm going to say that we've done two things to the program and the bad news is we did them both at the same time. The first thing is we changed the program. There's some new requirements to the new program and it's based on proficiency as opposed to just showing up and flying. That's one. But the other thing that seems to be the most difficult is we've also automated. Now, if we would have just went in and automated we would have got some complaints and it would have been difficult for people to comprehend but it really makes it harder to comprehend when we did both at the same time. So all of a sudden, just like the example of the microwave all of a sudden something you've done, you've known, you've loved becomes a hassle. It's different. But we felt it was worth doing both of those things at once so that it's one transition and remember the transition's really just for a small group albeit a very important group of pilots that participated in the past and that's those 17,050 that participated in 2005 and there were probably another 20,000 people that participated in one level of the other during that year. We just don't have record of them ever receiving an actual phase of wings. So that's a smaller group than the 680,000 airmen we would really like to get participating in the program. So we do have a problem there of convincing people and training people about the old systems changes and then also just letting people know that the program's out there. When I was asked to make some changes and actually I was just asked to automate the old wings program I did a very scientific study. I went out at Salt Lake International Airport and spent a couple days asking every single pilot that came into an FBO there whether they came in in a Learjet, a Falcon it didn't matter what they came in with it could have been a 152 it didn't matter. Every single pilot that I could get my hands on that came in for those two or three days I asked them some basic questions about the wings program and that came to me a stark reality that we did not do a very good job advertising the old program because very few people knew about the old program. They were a few that had wings but very, very few and amazing to me was most of the CFIs that were there knew nothing at all about the wings program so it's going to be awful hard for them to get people to participate in a program they know nothing about. So we really had our work cut out for us and that's also when we found out when we interviewed CFIs and other people why they didn't participate. The number one reason was because they didn't know about the program but the second one and probably the most important was from the CFIs. Flight instructors said you know Jim I've heard about the program but as soon as I found out there was no completion requirements other than for somebody to show up and fly I did not want my name in their log book because it was totally possible for somebody and hopefully this didn't happen to you and hopefully you're not one of these people you probably aren't if you're sitting here in this seminar because you have a safety mind you want to know more about safety and you strive to learn things. So, but one of the things we found out you could actually fly in an airplane for how many hours? Three. Three hours, right? What did we have to do for those three hours? Anybody want to throw those things out? Take off some landings. Basic instrument. And basic flight maneuvers, okay? Those are the three things an hour each respectively for those three subject areas but you know what? There was no completion requirement other than you survived the three hours and I had CFIs come to me and say you know, I was lucky to have survived the hour I did with take-offs and landings in fact it was so bad I wouldn't do the other two hours with them but still I found myself required to make a log book entry that I had spent an hour doing take-offs and landings with this airman there was no way in the world I would have ever signed him off for a flight review in fact I probably wouldn't have signed him off the solo and those are comments that we got from people so I immediately found out that we had to do more than just automate the old program we really needed to make some changes to make it viable, make it worthwhile to all of us we didn't make it more complicated we truly didn't the process perhaps of understanding it and how it works is a little more complicated I'll give you that because computers can be complicated they really can be and sometimes they can be our best friends but today is in front of my five computer screens in my workplace of days when I wish I could throw about seven of them out because they're so frustrating at times and I understand it we'll try to walk you through that process as we go through our day to day in this short time we have we've talked about the old program when we said there was three flights three hours we had to do so we'll call that the flight track we had a flight track and what else do we have to do we had to do a seminar now what did the seminar have to be anything it could be anything so if I wanted to tell you about this really neat trip I took to Alaska and talk about all the neat places I went and all the neat things I did and never once say anything about safety let alone flying the actual airplane that counted because just about anything counted and you know what it could be 15 minutes long you know the old man in the van type mentality where we took a VCR stuck it in a small little television in a hangar some place where the sound wasn't very good and things weren't up to speed perhaps you watch a video for 15 maybe 20 minutes the guy stands up and says now is there any questions now let's go get the refreshments and that counted you got just as much credit for that as coming to a seminar or workshop that lasted all day long that tested you on the things they were teaching you and really did some good to make you a safer more proficient pilot the credit was the same do you think that was fair I don't think it was because I think if you work hard at it you ought to get credit for it and if it's something that's small but still significant you ought to get credit for that but appropriate credit so we have a knowledge track it's just like the old program we had a flight track and a knowledge track we're going to explain in more detail in the new program but I want you to be able to see the difference and the similarities between the two programs so how long was a credit or one of those flights good for in the old program one hour we're going to do it for one hour but how long was the one year 12 months so there was a time limit on the value of those credits wasn't there 12 months do you know what the new program anybody know what the value is for the new program now don't get confused but it's 365 days okay now we can do that because we have computers and it's a lot easier to calculate but the point is it's the same if you get a credit it's good for 12 months so we have a flight track same as the other one we have a ground track or knowledge track same as the other one there's just different requirements they're still as good as long as the other program allow them to be so you get a phase of wings what else did that do for you a flight review I heard BFR but I'm going to do one of my pet peeves and say we haven't had a BFR for about 10 or 15 years but it's a flight review that we do every other year so we'll play semantics but that's what it really is it's a flight review we took the biannual out of it about 15 years ago but it's important for us to know those things if we want to be proficient okay now I'm going to take you on a little mental journey here just real quick because I think this is important too because you need to get in the frame of mind of where we're going with the new program so very quickly my 5-minute analogy here I want you to try to think with me alright I want everybody in the audience here and you people at home watching I want you to think of somebody that's near and dear to you okay so get somebody in mind somebody that's really near and dear to you that you love, you care about you take with you flying you care enough about them to take you take them with you or maybe you care enough about them that you don't take them with you I don't know but anyhow you care about this person that is what you have something mentally in mind I don't mean to hurt anybody and I don't mean to hit any soft spots here but I do want to draw an analogy so I'm just pulling one out of the air and I hope it doesn't offend anybody but this person now we've just diagnosed with brain cancer they have a tumor on their brain and you have the formidable task of figuring out who's going to operate on this dear loved one of yours it's operable it can be fixed so that's the good news but now you need to find somebody so you go to the first doctor you have three available quite frankly there's probably three or four thousand but you have three available in this scenario and the first one is he's good he looks good you go in his office he's got a nice plaque up on the wall that says he is one that he's a neurosurgeon he can do the work he's legal he can do it and you ask him a couple questions sir when's the last time you did one of these he goes well you know I I did one a couple years ago you know it turned out okay it was alright and I'd be happy to do yours for you it's pretty routine you know it's not something you know it's not brain surgery it's not anything that's really overly complicated I can do it for you fifty thousand dollars now how many of you would pick this person right off the bat no you probably wouldn't would you okay so you go to the second one and she has this nice plaque up on the wall herself you know and it says she is one I'm a neurosurgeon and you start asking hey when's the last time you did this you know well you know I've done one or two in the last couple years and you know and they were okay you know they're both living and stuff and so yeah it's okay well do you keep up on the current technology and things well I've read some journals here and there occasionally look into that but I'll bone up on it before I do yours you know a hundred thousand dollars so how many would pick this one no it's what I hear well how many would pick this one over the first one yeah so this one's you know legal and probably current I mean you know they're a little more current so now you go to the next one and they say you see the same plaque graduated from the same place they are one and you ask them questions well what about this well you immediately know it's a little bit of difference because you see AOP's pilot magazine and you see some things on their on their stand you know you see some current things that kind of attract your attention to them right but no you see the you see the latest journals medical journals on their table and you see books open on their desk and you start asking questions like how many of these have you done well I've done twelve in the last month I've done over three thousand of them in my lifetime and they're just they're a pretty simple routine however I do keep up on the latest techniques and skills that are required to do them properly and at least evasive that we can be hundred and fifty thousand dollars how many of you would pick the last one okay now you're above the insurance so you're just going to collect the insurance right no but realistic how many would pick the last one you know everybody would I guess you're going to collect the insurance on the loved one I don't know but the point is and I hope you can see this you have somebody that's legal they can do it you have somebody that's legal and current and they can do it or you can have somebody that's proficient and you pay for those different levels don't you if you really want the person that's good at it proficient you're probably going to pay a little bit more because proficiency costs money now I ask you a simple question why would you put the same loved one that you would pay the hundred and fifty thousand dollars hands down to get the most proficient person you could to do the operation on them why would you put the same loved one in an airplane seat next to you when you're only legal if you're only current why don't you raise them to the same level of value when they're in the airplane with you just keep that in mind as we talk today okay the wings program we talked about it we have a flight track we have a ground track well let's take a look at what that looks like if you look up here on the screen what I've already done because we're not here to teach you how to log in to fa-safety.gov but one of the requirements is you do log in with an email address on fa-safety.gov you need to be logged in individually you can't be logged in as a company or as a husband and wife if you both want credit because we have to know who gets the credit so you need to be logged in individually and that's on fa-safety.gov well again we don't have all the time in the world here so I really want to talk about the wings program so we're going to go immediately to it once you've logged in one of the first things they're going to do is ask you to fill out a profile now I've already done this for this airman but I'm going to go to the profile page just to show you how easy this is now you may ask why are you asking me questions well let's talk about that for a minute in the future well let me ask this I have a gentleman on the front row do you think you're flying and the type of flying you do and the days you fly and the type of aircraft is the same as this young person over here no they're not you know I would be surprised if anybody in this audience today have the same flying skills and do the same type of flying on a daily basis you don't well why is it then that we would think that doing the same three maneuvers takeoffs and landings basic instruments and basic flying maneuvers would be one fits all that's the way we've done the other program and in fact we did it repeatedly for 20 phases year after year the same thing and yet everybody's flying is different okay soon you will see some things added to the airman profile on the wings page that will help you tailor this program to your flying needs and your demographics it will be able to tell you the three or four most likely reasons for you to have an accident in other words here's the top three reasons why I might die this year in my airplane and it's going to say here are some courses that you can take to help you mitigate those causal factors in your flying so that you don't end up a statistic but it's going to be tailored to you do you see the significant change that is in the old program and we could not do that if we didn't automate it and put it on a computer we just couldn't do it the book would be this thick on all the courses and how to do it so that's one reason why we automate but right now we're not doing that we're going to use the kiss principle we're going to keep it simple Sam everybody else knows what it means right all we need to do is put in the aircraft category and class or aircraft categories and classes that we fly and that we'd like to use to participate in the program so not necessarily what you rate it but what you'd like to use to participate in the program we're going to put in the certificates that we would like to use to participate in the program and then we're going to put in the last date that we had a flight review that could be your last wings phase it could be the last time you got a certificate or the last time you just had a flight review signed off in your logbook then we recognize thanks to Brian Neville my assistant he fought this and fought this and said we really need to recognize those that participated in the old awards program in the new wings program so we have a place here now for you to put in the phase that you accomplished in the old program so that it's here forever to show what phase you participated in and now we only go to 20 I'm glad to report that nobody in this audience said they got more than 20 because that's all that was allowed in the old program now when I was up in Oshkosh last year we had several that went to 23 and 24 phases but really the advisory circle and the program only allowed for 20 so that's how high you can go here and then you save that now I've already done this so I'm just going to go to the page once you've done this then you're going to go to my wings my wings is the page where everything happens it's your history page of what's happening with your wings credits okay and this has two different depictions of wings it has a 13 month calendar why? because the credits are worth a credit for 12 months and we put the other month in there so you can see what's just fallen off so you can see what's disappeared it's hard to see on the screen up here and it may be online but this scale as it gets closer to the end of the 13 months it turns yellow and then a little kind of orange is red and then red to indicate that it's getting time to be thinking about these another neat thing about being automated is we will send you an email anytime something falls in this critical area to remind you that you have a credit that's about to fall off the scale so you need to get busy over the next 60-90 days and fulfill that credit again if you want to keep the phase of wings that you hold now in this example you'll also see that we don't have a phase of wings and you'll see the date that I put in for my flight review and it says right underneath that this is based on my information that I put in Airman provided information because you could do that wrong and then you'd get a wrong indication here of when your flight review is due now notice mine has expired if you haven't entered in your phase of the old program it'll ask you and you can go back to that page and put in the phase that you wanted to participate in now I realize I'm running through a few of these things very quickly but what you need to do is log on and go here and play you can't break it and if you do think that it's broke just use Bill Gates three finger salute control, alt, delete and it'll bring you right back to the front screen your computer will reboot you can log back on and everything will be back like it should be so if you really get lost do what Bill Gates does during his presentation control, alt, delete seems to work for him so it should work for most of us if you have a Mac I don't know if that works or not okay back to this well I want to show you how similar this is so I'm going to go to the help page and you'll notice that there's help everywhere on this page there's all kinds of help out there to help you get to know how to do the wings program because we know automation is difficult and we know there's some new things that you have to do for the new program so we have help everywhere click on any of the help wings help over here wings information over here almost every page has a link or links to our help files you get here and there's a quick and easy guide to wings there's wings made easy and there's a validator wings credit made easy how do you actually get the credit once you've done something and we'll talk about that but I just want you to know that the help is there for you really we've answered all the standard questions that people have on this help page we also have what I call the decoder ring you know we're inherently governmental which means we have to do everything in acronyms you know SPAN fast team you know FAA by itself we have all these acronyms we realize people don't know what AMEL means all the time especially if you take it out of context so we have a decoder ring here that'll tell you what all those things mean how many of you have seen the the K-R-B-1 and you go what in the world is that well again here's the decoder ring but I'm going to do you one better here's a nice little grid that's at the bottom of your screen now that you can see and I want you to see how similar this new program is to the old program we have a knowledge track and in the knowledge track we have three credits the old program required one credit this one does require three we have a flight track it requires three credits the old program required three flights right three hours of flying how many hours do you have to fly to get these three credits anybody know as much as it takes is the real thing I'd like to say you do have to fly so there is a requirement but as much as it takes okay because now you have to show proficiency at flying your aircraft whether it's a single engine or a Learjet you have to show proficiency at flying the aircraft to the certificate level that you choose in the program to participate at it's really that simple if you go up and get one flight for an hour and 15-20 minutes depending on what airport you take off at you know obviously here you could do it real quick but if you were taken off from LaGuardia it'd probably be a little bit more difficult to get some place where you could do the maneuvers so it really depends on where you're at of how long this might take but that's also true with the old program but you can take off and you can pick three credit areas three activities that you would like to do show your proficiency at and you might be able to do it if you're proficient and you stay current and you stay proficient you might be able to easily do that in an hour and a half right there you've immediately saved an hour and a half of flight time off the old program and more importantly now you've shown proficiency you've said I can do it now the theory behind this is you're going to want to try to cut that time down most of us do to save money and especially the price of gas now we want to save that money so the theory is that you'll go out when you're flying and you'll do things to stay proficient on your normal flights you'll be thinking safety you'll be reading the latest journals you'll be reading the latest information on safety you'll get the manual out about your airplane once in a while to do your pre-flights and you'll do some of those things to stay proficient so that when you do go with the CFI throughout the year to get these credits you'll be proficient and you can show it very quickly now there's three phases now because or three levels of proficiency and generally you will find that the basic phase is for most of us it's the private pilot or less phase it means I'm going to show proficiency to at least what I could do when I got my private pilot certificate I've got to tell you one of the funniest phone calls but it's indicative of some of the attitudes out there that I received when we started the wings program this gentleman called me up and said Jim are you the guy in charge of this new program and I said well it depends if you're going to complain about it no it's Brian Neville if it's something you want to praise about it then it's me Jim Piles and Brian's my assistant so I give him all the bad news and I take all the good praise just like any good person would do so anyhow I said no I'm the person who stops here I'm the one who's trying to organize this and get it out so what does that mean to us this guy was mad he was upset he said you know what I cannot believe that the FAA or you Jim would expect me to fly at the private pilot level as good as I did when I took my test 30 years ago now I hear some giggles and laughing doesn't that seem ludicrous when you hear that kind of a statement this guy was dead serious he was serious that he did not think after 30 years he should be required to know what he knew when he got his private or to fly as well as he did 30 years ago I was appalled I thought for a minute now I can really chew this guy out or I can you know I can laugh at him but he's being serious he truly believes this and I said I took a deep breath and I said sir you're absolutely correct you should not fly as well as you did 30 years ago you've had 30 years of experience and the fact that you're talking to him on the phone means you've lived through it I expect you to fly 30 years better than when you got your certificate 30 years ago he just couldn't believe that we would expect him to fly better it's amazing to me but we do have that out there and those are the people we really need to get to with these kind of programs because they need to spend more time trying to be proficient at what they do and not just legal and current so it's important it goes back to that same scenario I gave you about do you take the person for the brain surgery that's legal legal and current or legal current and proficient who would you want to fly with who do you want to be in your airlines well regulations require the airlines and the commuters and the 135 operators to do more than we have to do as general aviation pilots don't they and the reason is because the general public who gets in an airplane expects the government to regulate that industry to the point that those pilots are proficient but we don't do that for us GA pilots we say it's up to you to figure out what that level of proficiency is we're going to give you the bare minimums by regulation which is what we do the wings program I'm here to tell you is not for everybody it is not it is not for the person that doesn't care about safety it is not for the person that thinks they're better than safety is and they don't need it the wings program is for people that would like a structured program to help them maintain proficiency that's what it's here for there's a lot of ways to do that let's go back to the diagram so we have three phases or three levels the basics the private as I was saying the advanced phase is more a level up it's a commercial some instrument work that type of area the master is more of the CFI teaching people how to fly advanced ATP a lot of really heavy instrument type work and that's that level it's a much higher proficiency level it's not like the old phase where you just do it and do it and do it it's what level do I want to get and attain and maintain so the other significant difference in the program is now you get a phase and we're going to talk basically the basic phase today because it's simple and we only have time to talk about one phase in depth so to get the basic phase you do six things now we recommend that you do six things through the year which means you do something every other month I highly recommend that you divide these up and you do them a flight a ground, a knowledge a flight, a knowledge so that you fly three different seasons during the year with a certified flight instructor you can talk about pre-flighting in the winter versus the summer and things like that now some of you may come from Florida and there is no real winter when I left the house yesterday the day before I was shoveling snow in Salt Lake City so we have a different type of climate and you do down here because you have hurricanes we don't have those there so you have seasonal differences in your flying and it's important for you to fly with qualified people to keep you current so that's the way we recommend it now this is not to say that you can't go to one of our great providers of simulator type training like flight safety, SIMCOMS and the other myriad that are out there those are great, there's a place for all that and yes they do it more on a come here, do it in a week and go home bases, you can still participate in a wings program, you can still get credit and you can still actually do this throughout the year to maintain that level of proficiency that they give you on that one time a year shot that you do so the basic face is there's a knowledge track just like the other one except there's three credits now remember we told you that there's certain subjects that maybe this gentleman has to have and this person over here doesn't so we've structured this so that there's core requirements that's the red boxes it's just like if you were going to go to college and take a bachelor's degree they require everybody to take an English course because it's a core course everybody should know how to read and speak and understand English so they make you take one of those they make you take a basic math course well this is no different we're going to make you take certain subjects and show some level of proficiency or maintain some level of proficiency in those and those are based on accident causal factors why are people crashing airplanes and the number one reason today irrespective of the make and model category and class of aircraft or even the ratings that you hold is what pilot error okay we're saying loss of control during takeoffs and landings but there's a deeper rooted thing that fits into both of those aeronautical decision making so it's mistakes that we make in our judgment or thought processes or pre-flight planning wherever the mistake was made that led to us making mistakes when we fly so we're requiring everybody for instance to take the core subject aeronautical decision making now you can take that online at fasafety.gov you can take it from a myriad of other places but the entire safety foundation has over 20 courses accredited in a new program already and they're working on more all the time along with other people that are out there both commercial entities that charge money and those that do it for free they're out there and then there's other subjects we're not going to go into those because of time but you can click on these when we show you the page on my wings and it'll clearly list what you can do and then there's three flight credits based on time they're based on proficiency we have taken and I say we Brian Neville my assistant has taken all of the practical test standards that are out there for every category and class of aircraft and has divided those up into equitable divisions for activities that you can do in an airplane or a helicopter or a balloon or any of the other categories and classes of aircraft to divide those up so that you can take that and show your proficiency at them you show proficiency you get the credit it's that simple as you go up the scale the proficiency you have to show is based on a higher practical test level like the commercial or the ATP or instrument or CFI like that so you have core areas here again because we have certain causal factors remember the airman profile later on as you fill out more information on your airman profile it'll be hooked to the database that says if you're 50 years old you fly XYZ aircraft and you do it mostly during the night here's the three reasons that you're most likely the people in your category over the entire United States or in your local area have had accidents and this is why and here's some courses that you should take and those will then become your core subject areas see the significance in that right now they're based on the US norms because we haven't made it to where you have to answer more questions in your airman profile and those norms will always be there for those that don't want to give out any extra information like your age or where you fly so you'll always be able to participate in it to the basic level and with basic parameters then we have electives electives are all those other subjects that you might want to do when you fly and again that helps a CFI and you as an airman tailor a program that's special for you do you fly a tailwheel aircraft so you may want to practice something different in that type of regime then maybe somebody that flies a pressurized P-210 for instance and they want to talk about high altitude flying and pressurization systems and things like that it's to allow you to deal with all those other flying areas to make it a program that's really aimed at what you do alright so that's all neat but how do we put all this in the computer that's the part everybody seems to have a problem with because you can see right now the program is not that much different is it you have a flight track three credits the old program is a flight track in three hours so we've actually tried to save you some money in all the program and stay proficient year-round which is what we're really aiming for is not that one shot one weekend every other year we want you to stay proficient year-round and think safety year-round at least every other month do something safety oriented if you do that we've actually tried to save you some money in that process okay then we have a knowledge track instead of just going to a seminar now you can get knowledge credit from CDs DVDs online courses both ones you pay for and ones that are free and they're all right here and we're going to track it for you to show you how that works now online you go to my wings my wings is where all this is tracked like I said and it's also where you go to get credit now in the short period of time I'm going to show you very quickly how to get through this navigation that everybody seems to have problems with my first thing is to understand the program you have to be sold on the fact that you want to do something more to be a safe pilot and that's where we've spent the bulk of the time it's for you to understand the program the fact that it still is basically simple you have a flight track and knowledge track the flight tracks based on proficiency the knowledge track and flight track have certain core subjects that we want to make sure everybody adheres to the basic phase is the phase that qualifies you for your flight review it's the only phase you need to get and can keep to maintain your flight review the other neat thing about this is if at any time you can go to my wings page and you can see all of these six credits three flight, three ground and required for basic on your timeline which I can't on this picture here then you have a flight review the current one and it resets your date so in effect if you never let the six items fall off your calendar in other words when one is going to fall off like this one you replace it so it would come over here with a new course you've taken your flight review will never expire you never have to worry about it and it will automatically track it for you so you don't have to think about what date it is you just come right here and it's going to show you on your wings this is the day your flight reviews do it's really kind of a neat program and again it's there to encourage you to have an ongoing safety program no matter what it is the idea is to keep it going all the time now the graph I showed you of the basic and knowledge tracks they look a little different online out of necessity because we needed to show you all the information that's there about what's happening for you for instance we have the knowledge track we have the flight track we have the same three credits that are due in each of those tracks for the basic phase we just orient them vertically instead of horizontally so that you we can get all the information in here about the courses you've taken for each of those credits so for instance this KEB which is knowledge elective basic again there's no real scientific thing we can get up here to tell you exactly what they are but remember we have a knowledge track and the knowledge track says that we have three credits so here's our knowledge track everything over in the knowledge track no matter what phase starts with a K if it's one of those core C-O-R-E courses then you have an R as the second letter and an E if it's an elective so you can already see that this really doesn't take a lot of thinking to figure out what we're doing with this credit as opposed to this credit so we put the letters in there just to make it simple so that no matter where you're at if you're on a site if you're looking at somebody's CD if you're on somebody else's side like AOPA or Safety Foundation and they were talking about one of their courses it's Wings Credit they could put these initials in there and you would know that it was qualified for knowledge elective basic credit or in knowledge required B2 basic 2 credit there's a difference between whether it was an English course and a math course and that's the only reason why those are there it's not too complicated for you it's just merely to point out that this box to get this credit has to have the KRB1 accreditation and that's really all it's for we've tried to take out the big catalog like a college would have for courses and if you've got a green check it means you have the credit and it shows you the credit right here the credit that makes up that credit what course did I take the Art of Aeronautical Decision Making I took it on 5, 3, 2007 it's worth one credit KRB1 knowledge basic one credit right here it is KRB1 and again here's the Art of Aeronautical Decision Making so you just have two simple views the timeline this shows you what's going to drop off and if you've got them all grouped together like these three hours over here or you can look at it based on the actual credits required so it's really pretty simple but now you ask well okay that's all great but how do I get those stupid check marks on there right how do I actually get the credit well again that's really pretty simple we've tried to make it as simple as we could and by the way we've heard the complaints we are actually going to make a page here that looks very similar to the first grid I showed you which is credit one, credit two, credit three and you click on those boxes and it will not give you all this extra information you can come to this advanced view I hate to use the word advanced in basic view because we have basic advanced in and master wings levels but you'll have this simple view and you'll have the one that we now have here which is a little more detailed so we'll probably call them the simple fly simplified in a detailed view but on this detailed view if you want to know what goes in this box right here or one of these flights it's really simple you just click on this little binoculars and if you click on the binoculars based on what you put on your airman profile it's going to bring up a list of all the things that currently have wings credit that will fill that box it's that simple what do I do to get that check mark I click on that pair of binoculars and it brings up a list of all the things I can do in this example with what I put in my profile which was airplane, single engine land, private that's the only things I put in I can do airplane, single engine land, air work I can do tailwheel I can get a tailwheel endorsement if that's something that I would like to do or have I can do a complex aircraft airplane endorsement high performance airplane endorsement or I can get another rating or I can take some of these commercial courses that are down here or some AOPA courses or if I'm a member of Civil Air Patrol and I do flying for them some of their training and proficiency requirements qualify for wings credit as well but let's just say I want to fly that's what I'm here for I want to do the basics so I just pick this first activity and it's going to give me a very nice list of what I can do and it says you have to do this to the private pilot practical test standard and if you don't have it click on it right here and it will download the entire practical test standard for you you don't have to go looking anymore it's right here at your fingertips and it says you have to do enough of these tasks with an instructor and show proficiency to equal one credit and then it lists a lot of areas of operation in the private practical test standard airplane, single engine land that you can go do you pick four of these items out you show proficiency with your flight instructor they give you this endorsement in your logbook that's clearly written right here on the page that you print out here's a printer friendly version take with you on your knee board and they go and sign us off in your endorsement it's very simple to do you come back to this page when you're done and you go right back to the same page and hit request credit this page will come up and it asks you two simple questions what date did you do the training so I'm going to click on this and say I did it today here at Sun and Fun and who did the training well what happens if you see a farce as luck I don't have a computer I don't care about computers and I'm not doing it well the neat thing is you have that endorsement don't you that they put in your logbook because they're required to do those if they do training with you and so they have an endorsement in your logbook you take that to any fast team representative any other CFI any ground instructor any DPE and those people can and should know how to validate that for you you just show them that you have the endorsement and it clearly says what you did gives them the exact number so all you do is go in here and put in their email address now you ask them for the email address that's the easiest way to do it but if you don't if it's somebody you've used in the past you just click on your recent validators here's people that have validated you in the past and they'll show up here so you don't have to keep looking them up most of us use the same two or three people all the time so their names are going to be right there for you you don't have to look them up let's say you don't know well you can always go in to find a validator it's going to come up and say here's a CFI it's within five miles of your house click on this it's going to give you a list it's that simple okay you pick out the one that you showed them your endorsement or pick out your CFI and they'll be right there when you hit submit let me put a name in here just so that it'll go somewhere when you hit submit when you click on one of them first it'll show them up here and then when you hit submit it's going to go out and send them an email and it's going to say hey Jim somebody has asked you to validate a credit now a CFI or any of these validators are going to have this little thing up here in the left hand corner when they log on it's going to say credit administration credit validation and they'll be able to go to that and see what they've validated in the past and if there's anything pending so let me just log on as somebody else here just very quickly perhaps okay and I'm going to go back up here to this credit administration this is administrator so there's a lot of stuff on here but I just wanted to show you what that CFI is going to see when they go to their page it's going to ask me to log back on because it's timed out on me so let me do that real quick on this computer that's one thing it will do to you if you wait a long time after you've logged on it'll log you out that's just a security thing but when they go online they'll go right to that credit validate credit and they'll only have one thing up there not this big long list and they'll see this page it says you've been asked to validate here's the pending validation that we'd like and this is the one I just put in it says hey they did this on 4.9.2008 and here's what they did if they need to look at that remember they had the endorsement in front of them or they did the work and they just go over here and click yeah I'll validate that I just did the flight with them so they just click on validate it comes up and says gives them a choice do you want to validate or not because if I picked the wrong thing like maybe a multi-engine I'd send it back and say no we didn't do that and I just go approve the credit and submit that's all there is to it it's not a big thing you just go to one place there's the pending item you click on validate except you're done as a validator that's how simple it is to get credit okay now if we go back to that original screen of this airman that was just here and we go to my wings we're going to now be able to see that this person now has airplane single engine air work during this month and it shows up it's that quick it's that easy it is not a complicated thing to do it truly is not now is it going to take you a few times to get feeling good about it yes but it's well worth the time and effort that you put into the program and it's only worth the time and effort that you put into it just like flying there's a lot of ways for us to keep current every time we fly an instructor a long time ago said to me when I first started flying you know 6,000 hours ago said to me Jim every time you get in an airplane do something to maintain your proficiency no matter how small or insignificant you think it is every time you get in an airplane don't ever get into an airplane unless you do something to maintain your proficiency and I've lived to that standard all these years and I think it's made me a better pilot this program is a simple way for you to tailor a program a proficiency program for yourself it's every bit as good as you make it it's as complex as you would like to make it because believe me there's over like 800 activities you can do if you qualified and all make some models of aircraft categories and classes there's tons of things to do we're adding new courses new opportunities all the time we'll meet with people here at Sun & Fun in Oshkosh to add even more of their programs and get them wings accredited and certified because we believe it's through us participating with industry and getting that information to you the airmen that's really going to make a difference in safety the old program was a great program but it's really outlived it's usefulness we need to step up we need to raise the bar we need to do more to be safer we've picked the low lying fruit as you've heard a million times of our accident causal factors we need to drill down we need to be data driven and we need to really drill down it why you and me are having accidents in our aircraft if we're going to prevent them and then we need to tailor programs and our own training proficiency for us to be able to be the best that we can be to be not only current or legal current but also to be proficient I thank you very much I'll stay around to entertain any questions you might have so that we can answer those we have a time for maybe one or two questions right now so we have a microphone we'll take one okay I don't have those numbers at my fingertips but I can ask these people how many people have completed a phase right here right now 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 9 or 10 which is a good group here outstanding that's a good point you're actually saying we need a way to validate that and get it to somebody without actually taking them in my logbook and we're working on the way to do that right online so it'll be there soon outstanding now let me tell you something else real quick as we leave okay that this reminded me of you know if you have any problems write there's plenty of places on the website to tell you right where to write and ask your questions ask your FPM read the manuals first because they're all right there they're simple they're pitchers even I can understand so try to read those first work through your work through your problems and then contact us we're there to help you we know it's a new program we know it's going to take some time for everybody interested we've given out already to date over 80,000 credits in the new program we have over 20,000 people that have already signed up to participate remember we had 17,050 that participated and got wings in the old one to date we have about 750 people that have received their wings credit remember we stressed to do it over a year's period of time so keep that in mind thank you very much our time's up we'll answer questions here as soon as we're through so thank you very much and we're glad that you could be here today anybody that leaves here go back go to the building behind me and there's people there who got the computer and two people standing by to answer your further information right so we have a few minutes we're off I think we're off the air now and so we'll take just a minute to answer a few more questions and again we have people out there that can stand in front of the computer to help you watch if we can do it out loud and we can keep the mics on we'll just do it that way not quicker when everybody might have the same questions so let's do it real quick if we can and I can hear you we don't need the other mic Art of Air Knuckle Decision Making