Redundancy is a good thing. If one component fails to do its job a second one can take over and provide the needed function.
Thinking about redundancy, I considered my gluttonous appetite for aviation information. I subscribe to a handful of aviation magazines. I get Business & Commercial Aviation (BCA) and Aviation International News to keep up with the corporate/business aviation sector. For staying up to date on general aviation I’m a member of AOPA and Cessna Pilots Association and get both their magazines as well as the Cessna Flyer magazine, Flying magazine and General Aviation News.
You’d think I’d be overwhelmed by the information overload, but in addition to the paperware I also get daily online news from Aero-News.net, AVWeb, AOPA’s smartbrief.com and the Digest from Cardinal Flyers Online (CFO). And then there are the weekly updates from AOPA’s ePilot, EAA’s e-Hotline, NBAA’s Update and Flying’s eNewsletter.
If that wasn’t enough input, I also belong to a number of organizations: AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association), EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association), WAI (Women in Aviation International), CFO (Cardinal Flyers Online) and NAFI (National Association of Flight Instructors).
But with my redundancy tendencies, it won’t come as a surprise for you to learn that I recently joined another organization. SAFE (Society of Aviation and Flight Educators) is another association dedicated to fostering the professionalism of flight instructors and ensuring their continuing education. It and NAFI have somewhat similar missions so they may be redundant. We’ll have to see.
Some question whether the flight instructor community is large enough to support two similar organizations. Again the future will tell.
But first some history. NAFI was founded in 1967 and dedicated exclusively to “raising and maintaining the professional standing of the flight instructor in the aviation community.”
The organization grew slowly and by 1995 its membership role numbered only about 2,000 instructors. That year, in order to help “grow the association, elevate the stature of the flight instructor community and improve and expand its programs and services,” NAFI became an affiliate of the EAA.
The EAA affiliation worked. The association grew more rapidly and today has more than 5,000 members. Its services and benefits to instructors include government representation, insurance, a searchable instructor database, discounts from a number of suppliers, a free subscription to Flying magazine and the association’s own Mentor, a monthly magazine that is “dedicated to improving the teaching skills of aviation instructors of all disciplines.”
One of the most prestigious programs of NAFI is the Master Flight Instructor program. Developed by JoAnn and Sandy Hill, the Master Certified Flight Instructor (MCFI) program was launched in 1997, followed in 1999 by the Master Flight Instructor (MFI) and Master Ground Instructor (MGI). The Master Instructor designation is based on an instructor demonstrating an ongoing commitment to excellence, professional growth and service to the aviation community. As with the flight instructor certificate it must be renewed every two years to encourage continuing professional growth and involvement in a variety of aviation-related endeavors.
With NAFI as successful as it apparently is, why did the members of SAFE feel the need to create a similar organization? The effort grew out of a schism between a group of some of the members, many of whom have earned the Master’s designation, and the NAFI Board of Directors.
Back in October 2008, word got out that the Board of Directors of NAFI was planning to vote to not re-elect Sandy and JoAnn Hill to the board. A number of members were surprised since the pair had been core members of the board for decades and instrumental in creating and maintaining the highly popular Master Instructor program. They were further surprised to discover there was no provision for members of the organization to have a say in the election of board members and that there were no term limits, so that the board could self-perpetuate without any input from the membership.
The discontented members organized into a group called TBO-NAFI (Take Back Our-NAFI) and appealed to the board to change its bylaws to allow input from the membership for board elections and to postpone the proposed removal of the Hills until the bylaws could be changed to allow participation from the members at large.
Tom Poberezny, chairman of EAA, tried to mediate an accommodation and recommended that the NAFI board develop and adopt new articles/bylaws for NAFI in a timely fashion that would allow at least 51 percent of the directors to be elected by the membership with staggered three-year terms. He also recommended that the administrative/operational responsibilities of NAFI programs be transferred to the NAFI staff under a timetable aligned with the new election process.
For a time it seemed a compromise could be reached. “The issues are important,” Poberezny said, “but unfortunately, the two core issues got lost in the extreme communications. From October [when the board said it planned not to re-elect the Hills] until February [when the board voted not to re-elect them] it appeared that things could have gotten done but the core issues were lost in the rhetoric. When people get so emotionally involved that they don’t listen to reason they lose all clarity of thinking.”
Despite what the TBO-NAFI group felt were assurances that nothing would be done until after the revision of the bylaws was made official, the NAFI board announced after a meeting in January, which included the annual election of the association’s directors, that it had not re-elected Sandy and JoAnn Hill to “future terms of service.” NAFI Executive Director Jason Blair, in commenting on the removal of the Hills from the board, wrote, “JoAnn and Sandy Hill made significant contributions to the organization. The strength and vision they brought to NAFI helped bring us to today, and gives us an excellent foundation for the future.” His comments beg the question of why they weren’t re-elected.
The TBO-NAFI group, feeling the NAFI board had been underhanded in its dismissal of the Hills before the change to the bylaws would let members vote on the board members, announced that it was forming a new member-centric flight instructor organization. The result was the creation of SAFE. A website (safepilots.org) explains its mission.
It’s believed that one of the reasons the Hills were removed was the decision by the board to assume the administration of the Master Instructor program. The board said it was taking the Master Instructor program “in-house to streamline the program and better align its processes and procedures with EAA’s to increase the synergy of the two organizations and improve overall performance.”
A bone of contention between the Hills and NAFI is the question of who actually owns the rights to the Master Instructor program. Both NAFI and the Hills claim ownership. “The Master programs continue forward,” Jason Blair said. “We have the trademark and copyright to it.”
JoAnn and Sandy Hill disagree. They insist that their ownership of the intellectual property rights is “clear and unambiguous. We own it. We were never compensated, never commissioned for creating it.” A request for a cease and desist order to prevent NAFI from continuing to use materials connected with the Master Instructor is considered a possibility.
Depending on the outcome of the ownership tussle, the Hills said they are tending toward a similar arrangement to provide a SAFE Master Flight Instructor Program as a benefit for members of SAFE but would plan to maintain complete autonomy of the program.
JoAnn and Sandy said they’re in the process of restructuring the Master Flight Instructor package to submit it to the FAA and qualify for a letter of authorization (LOA) that will allow designation as a SAFE Master Instructor to qualify as a method for renewing flight instructor certificates.
In the meantime, NAFI is responding to the original recommendations from TBO-NAFI that the bylaws be rewritten to allow member input to the election of members of the board. According to Jason Blair proposed changes will allow NAFI members a voice in the election of members of the Board. “While the exact process is yet to be finalized,” he said, “I welcome nominations with corresponding resumes or biographical histories of the nominees be sent to the NAFI office to be included in the review and selection process as it becomes finalized.”
While the Hills and NAFI deal with the ownership of the Master Instructor program, SAFE is moving ahead. The organization is holding elections by its members and others who have expressed an interest for its own board of directors, establishing itself as a nonprofit organization. It has already selected a logo and completed a letter of understanding (LOU) with the Federal Aviation Administration Safety Team (FAASTeam) establishing an arrangement to cooperate to promote aviation safety.
Are there enough flight instructors to support two similar associations? Poberezny said, “The flight instructor community is a small community and there might not be room for two organizations. When an organization forms for the wrong reasons it’s very difficult for it to be successful. People belong to groups if they offer value, not because they’re unsatisfied with the another’s programs.”
Nevertheless, Poberezny said of the organizers of SAFE, “I do wish them luck. The community doesn’t need negative issues. If they’ll concentrate on what it is they want to do, it might work out.”
Jason Blair admitted that NAFI had stagnated for awhile, but will now be more responsive. So some good has come from SAFE’s initial appeals. Of SAFE he said, “We’ll try to work with them if we can. I wish them luck. I don’t want to see anything in the flight instructor community fail.”
SAFE will succeed if it can offer flight instructors and aviation educators real values for signing up. According to Doug Stewart, who’s been acting as the spokesperson for the SAFE Interim Working Group, “SAFE’s appeal extends beyond just flight instructors to encompass all aviation educators, ground instructors, simulator instructors and academia, as well as creators of flight training media.” SAFE, he said, is building an extensive online library of training resources, creating a strong mentoring program for new instructors and moving to sponsor forums to include all providers of aviation education an opportunity to improve not only the status of flight instruction as a career choice, but also to improve the quality and focus of aviation education to fit today’s aviation needs. SAFE is seeking strong interactive input with the FAA to improve the areas where flight instruction is currently failing.
In the meantime I expect many, like me, will join both organizations, whether they’re redundant or not. Maybe one day, if the flight instructor community is too limited to support two organizations, the two can merge and a SAFE-NAFI will work to continue to promote professionalism and flight safety.
