Aviation Safety Report Offers Blueprint During Flight Instruction

CFIs should glean lessons from the annual Nall Report to help learners understand where risk originates.

Meg Godlewski

Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 05:42 PM ET

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It’s important to know how and when to perform a go-around. [Credit: Meg Godlewski]

Key Takeaways:

Flight instructors are key to aviation safety, responsible for understanding accident risks (like those detailed in the Nall Report) and integrating this knowledge into training scenarios.
Most aviation accidents stem from recurring issues such as stall/spins during the approach to landing, loss of engine power after takeoff, unstabilized approaches, fuel mismanagement, and inadvertent VFR flight into IMC.
Mitigating these risks requires specific training, including practicing critical maneuvers at safe altitudes, strict adherence to go-around procedures, comprehensive pre-flight planning (especially for fuel and weather), and maintaining instrument flying proficiency.

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The flight instructor is the first gatekeeper when it comes to aviation safety. It is incumbent on the CFI to teach and model good habits for mitigating risk—and you can’t do that without understanding where the risk is coming from, and when and where during the flight training process we are at a higher risk for an accident.

One way to do this is for the CFI to review the Nall Report, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s (AOPA) Air Safety Institute’s annual report that looks into accident causal factors—and to develop training scenarios to give learners the tools to address these risks.