Safety: A Culture of Professionalism

“Superior pilots use their superior judgment to avoid situations requiring the use of their superior skills.” -Anonymous

Angel Flight West Command Pilots provide a great service for their passengers. They volunteer to provide transportation to medical treatment and for other compelling needs because they want to help others. Along with the desire to help comes the responsibility to ensure a safe trip. Angel Flight West wants all Command Pilots to keep safety at the forefront as they plan and execute their missions. With that goal, this section covers some of the key safety aspects to be considered when flying Angel Flight West missions.

We strongly encourage you to read the Aviation Safety Articles below. Most are written by fellow Angel Flight West members, and they are tailored to the general aviation community and private pilots. We hope you find them helpful, and a reminder that the decisions regarding your flights are yours alone. Passengers know that they need to have a backup plan, and that we do not guarantee our flights, so we encourage you to cancel your flight if you have any concerns about safety.

Questions?

If you have any specific questions about safety operations, please reach out to our safety team below.

Bruce Poulton, AFW Safety Officer
[email protected]

Alexios Stavropoulos, AFW Safety Officer
Bruce[email protected]

General Safety Email
[email protected]

Safety Documents

Safety Above
All Else

Recommended Reading

Safety Articles

 
Angel Flight West Command Pilots provide a great service for their passengers.  They volunteer to provide transportation because they want to help others.  Along with the desire to help comes the responsibility to ensure a safe trip.  Angel Flight West wants all Command Pilots to keep safety at the …
 
Approximately, a year and a half ago the FAA issued Advisory Circular (AC) 120-123. It is regarding Flight Path Management (FPM) and it is addressed to Part 121/135 operations and Part 142 Training Centers. I am including a PDF link below, in case you are interested in all 46 pages of it!  https://w…
 
Passengers. ATC. Weather. Evil instructors. That little needle that’s pointing somewhere it shouldn’t. Stuff that demands your attention when you’d rather just be pre-flying, flying, or post-flying. We pilots are just humans (Except George. You know who you are), and we’re subject to distractions th…
 
Pleasant greetings to all.  I feel immensely privileged to be able to address you all and it is a position that I will never take lightly.  The process of Threat and Error Management is one of my favorite subjects in Aviation Safety.  It is applicable to absolutely every kind of flying and it is ind…
 
Meet Alexios: My name is Alexi Stavropoulos and I am deeply honored to be serving as AFW’s Safety Officer along with Bruce Poulton. I am grateful to own a Cirrus SR22T.  Without a doubt, my favorite flying activity in my Cirrus is to fly for AFW when my work schedule and weather permits. Both hav…
 
I was about to send out a Safety Newsletter on a different topic, when a recent event changed my mind. On a recent Saturday I had just returned from practicing a number of stalls in our Cessna T206, which I always enjoy doing. I was on the ramp at the Crownair FBO at MYF (Montgomery) talking with…
 
As pilots we all strive for passenger accolades after a smooth-as-glass landing, but is it the best landing? I love to do pattern work, even after decades of flying, and working for a smooth landing.  While it can be rewarding and offers great training, it does come with some safety iss…
instrument panel inside small plane 
Winter is almost over (but not quite) and the weather is changing. Spring is a time of quickly developing weather systems and unpredictable weather. Not that long ago I sat in my house in the Cascade foothills at 1,800 MSL and watched the effects of the portion of the "bomb cyclone" that passed thro…
 
The team at Angel Flight West hope you are enjoying the fall season! Recently I did a mission from San Diego to Imperial in the Eclipse. It was a beautiful IFR departure through low level clouds out of Montgomery (MYF) then quickly over the clouds, watching the bright moon which my passengers and…
 
Understanding Our Passengers  Upon finding a pilot for an Angel Flight West (AFW) mission, the AFW staff frequently calls the passenger only to hear. “I never heard from a pilot, so I scraped together money from friends and family to buy a commercial ticket,” or “I started driving yesterday,” or ev…
 
Stay Alert, and Don’t Get Complacent Relying on Controllers During my 44 years and 6,000 + hours as a pilot, there have been several near-miss experiences. The really close ones stick in my mind, much as any near-death experience would. Typically the close encounters occur while VFR in VMC. But occ…
 
Are you a mountain pilot?  You probably are even if you aren’t aware of it.  In most of Angel Flight West’s territory we encounter many, or even all, of the characteristics of mountain flying even though we may not be flying in the classical “back country.”  AFW Pilots routinely fly over some of the…
 
Located close to Stanford Hospital and Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital, Palo Alto Airport (KPAO) is an often used Angel Flight West mission destination. Only a short distance from the San Francisco bay, this sea-level airport’s tower is in operation from 0700 to 2100 local.  There are nin…
 
Gather a room full of pilots and ask them the following questions: How many of you have had an emergency while in flight? How many of you have declared an emergency? How many of you have had to complete any post-emergency “paperwork?” The answers are usually:  A few, a few less, and ze…
 
All pilots learn about density altitude yet most pilots never experience the truly detrimental effect it can have.   Brian, a friend of mine, flying a Piper Cherokee 160 and carrying all of his camping gear was on his way to OSH a few years ago.  He landed at in Butte, Montana to refuel.  It was a c…
 
Since there is a high likelihood that at least one airport on most missions is uncontrolled or non-towered, we’d like to share some thoughts on uncontrolled airport operations.  If you haven’t flown into an airport before (towered or non-towered), familiarize yourself using all available resources i…
 
In the course of my activities as a Flight Instructor and Mission Orientation Pilot, I take some time to review various pilot reporting requirements.  One of the many things I’ve learned is that some pilots are somewhat reluctant to declare an emergency when the circumstances dictate, at least parti…
 
Angel Flight West believes that we should share what we learn about our missions and the airports we visit so that we can learn from each other.  So, with that in mind… A couple of years ago I was flying a young man to Quincy, CA (2O1), an airport located near his home in the mountains of Norther…
 
All pilots, especially those who are instrument rated (those that are licensed by the FAA to fly in instrument meteorological conditions – i.e. clouds), are familiar with the term ‘personal minimums’.  It speaks to being aware at any given time to what a pilot-in-command is comfortable doing.  For e…
 
You may be aware that in 2008 there were three Angel Flight accidents with fatalities in other Angel Flight regions. To say this may be tempting fate, but to date Angel Flight West still has a perfect safety record while carrying passengers. An optimist would say that everything is working fine and…
Headshot of Rich Pickett 
Logging Cross-Country Time It is probably easier to navigate through the fog without instruments than trying to determine how to log cross-country time.  How you classify your flight time as cross-country depends upon the context of its use.  As the FAA has written before, there are mul…