Flight Test Safety Committee

The Flight Test Safety Committee (FTSC) was formed jointly in November 1994 by members of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), the Society of Flight Test Engineers (SFTE) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). These and numerous additional organizations presently comprise the FTSC. The purpose of the FTSC is to initiate and sustain a flight test related safety organization intended to promote flight safety, reduce the risk of mishap, promote risk reduction management and continually improve the profession's communication and coordination.
About FTSC

2025 Flight Test Safety Workshop - Call for Abstracts

2025 Flight Test Safety Workshop
6-7 May 2025
Greensboro, NC

The Flight Test Safety Committee, a joint committee of SFTE, AIAA, and SETP, is pleased to announce that the North American Flight Test Safety Workshop will be held 6-7 May 2025 in Greensboro, NC.

A Tutorial will be held on Tuesday 6 May, followed by a Technical Tour of HondaJet. Technical presentations will be held on Wednesday 7 May followed by an Award Dinner where the Dave Houle Best Paper Award, Tony LeVier Flight Test Safety Award and our new Flight Test Safety Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented. 

This is an official call for abstracts.

For the technical presentation portion of the Workshop, we want to hear from testers on all subject matters.

Each technical presentation selected is given a 30-minute slot (25 minutes for the technical presentation and 5 minutes for questions from the audience).  No proceedings are published for this Workshop, therefore formal written papers are not required.

Please send abstracts to the 2025 Flight Test Safety Workshop Chairman, Terry Pearce, via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The deadline for abstracts is 3 February 2025 to allow time for appropriate consideration and inclusion in the program.

Hotel Reservation Information will be provided in December.

Tutorial details and the registration site will be available soon!

 

Save the Date - 4 & 5 November 2025 European Workshop

EFTSW 2025 Save the Date Flyer

New Podcast Episode EP 59 – A Ghostly Intro to CRM

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP 59 – A Ghostly Intro to CRM

This month I begin a multi-part series talking about Crew Resource Management or CRM.  This episode looks at the beginnings of CRM with discussion on some early aviation accidents that led to its development. 

Listen Now!

Eastern Flight 401 in pop culture:

Supernatural S1E4
Mayday, in S5E44 "Fatal Distraction"
Why Planes Crash S1E3 "Human Error"

FAA Lessons Learned EAL 401

Lockheed Model L-1011 | Federal Aviation Administration


This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

Flight Test Safety Fact 24-10

October is my favorite month for publishing the FTSF, and though I don't explicitly address all the reasons why in this edition, I do link to articles that attempt to explain it. The whimsical format of this month’s newsletter is one part nostalgia, one part history and heritage, one part carnival, and one part thrilling experience that one might expect during the Halloween season.

This month seems special, if only because SpaceX caught an enormous rocket on Sunday, October 13. It seems like something out of science fiction, and it could easily be the opening scene of a horror movie. Maybe someday we will remember this event like we remember other milestones in aerospace and flight test history, events like October 14, 1947, the day we broke the sound barrier.

This month always follows the annual SETP symposium, and Chia introduces some flight test safety papers that readers should check out. Remember, pointing you to these kinds of papers is one of the key goals of this newsletter. Today—as I write this—is the first day of SFTE’s annual symposium, and I hope they have some great papers to share when all is said and done. Chia also introduces new members of the Flight Test Safety Committee inside this edition.

If you want to submit your own whimsical observations about flight test safety and its adjacent news and notices, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) or Susan or anyone on the Flight Test Safety Committee.

Finally, scary topics like statistics get a LOT of ink in this edition of the newsletter. Some things are normal. Some phenomena do follow a Gaussian distribution. And some don’t. Reminding ourselves of the flight test facts we do know to be true is a good way to not get fooled by shadows, by innocent things that wear scary masks, and creepy window dressings during the Halloween season.

Sincerely,

Mark Jones Jr.

Editor

For added security and convenience, you can download the pdf here ( https://flighttestfact.com/flight-test-safety-fact-24-10/ and here: https://flighttestsafety.org/ftsc-news/newsletter