Every once in a while I find myself leaving the pleasant confines of the Pilot's Lounge at the virtual airport and speaking to a group of pilots. So long as they don't throw produce and I depart before my tires are slashed, I consider such endeavors successful. I usually discuss the contents of whatever talk I'm going to give with some of the folks in the Lounge to try and make sure the what I'm talking about is accurate and also in the hopes they will catch me before I make a fool of myself. The later effort is not always successful.On April 26, 2003, I was invited to speak at the awards banquet for the FAA Safety Counselors of southeastern Michigan. Carol Callan and Rick Parmalee are the Safety Program Managers for the Willow Run FSDO (she is the Operations SPM for the Detroit District and he is the Airworthiness SPM for the state of Michigan) and had taken the lead to put the function together. They found themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel for someone to provide a 20-minute nap for the Safety Counselors after lunch. Hence, I was called.The FAA's Safety Counselor program has been around for some time and has enjoyed a fair amount of success in working with pilots on safety issues in a low-key manner. All of the counselors are volunteers; they give up their time to attend initial and recurrent training on safety issues and communication methods. They are then called upon by the FAA to speak in a non-threatening fashion to pilots who may have demonstrated some error in judgment or skill. They provide peer counseling for an aviator as an alternative to what can be a Big Brother approach by the FAA.At the banquet, the FAA recognized the hard work of Dr. Jerard Delaney of Monroe, Mich., who was named the Safety Counselor of the year for the Detroit District. Awards were given to the aviation maintenance technician of the year, Jim Gotha, also of Monroe, Mich., and the flight instructor of the year, Chris Kosin, who flies out of Plymouth Mettetal Airport. Judging from the applause in the room, the selections were very well-received. These are well-respected gentlemen in southeastern Michigan; my congratulations to each.In preparing my talk, I did a lot of soul-searching and then decided that this group of people, who have been working so hard to improve General Aviation safety, was the perfect audience for the announcement of the shiny new aviation safety program just out from Washington. I reasoned that if Frank Zappa could be the one to stand up on the podium with Vaclev Havel in Prague during the Velvet Revolution and give the speech that called for the Russians to pull their troops out of Czechoslovakia (it's true, he did and they did), I could be the one to break the news of the most far-reaching, radical General Aviation safety program ever. I just hoped that those listening understood satire.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/the-pilots-lounge-62project-d-a-r-w-i-n