Page 18 - March 18 TNT

WHO:
Charlie Precourt
Colonel, USAF, Ret.
NASA Astronaut (former)
Four Space Shuttle Missions
Shuttle Commander (STS-84 & STS-91)
HOMEBASE:
Salt Lake City, Utah
POSITIONS:
VP and GM, Propulsion Systems Orbital ATK
Chairman, EAA Safety Committee
Chairman, Citation Jet Pilot Safety Committee
RATINGS:
Instrument, Commercial, Multi-Engine, CFI, Various Experimental Authorizations
HOURS:
11,000+
by Rebecca Groom Jacobs 1. Many of your contributions to general aviation center on safety education and
improving best practices within the pilot community. How did this become a passion?
When I stopped flying professionally, I wanted to continue to fly for my own enjoyment, which exposed me to opportunities in general aviation, my first involvement being with EAA. Paul Poberezny, who I had developed a relationship with during my NASA days, requested my help in improving the safety record across the experimental/homebuilt communities. I happily agreed and started running EAA’s safety committee and have helped with initiatives such as the “additional pilot program.” Since it was initiated three years ago, there has not been a single accident in the first 10 hours of homebuilt flying for those who elect to use the program. What I am trying to do is bring what I learned as best practices in DOD and NASA flying to the GA community.
2. What central areas should the general aviation industry be focused on?
The single largest distinction of GA compared to other flying is you are generally speaking to a single-pilot operation. That leads to the key question: How do we enable the single pilot to be just as safe as a crew? There is still work to be done in finding the equivalent tools and resources for the single pilot that crew resource management (CRM) has done so successfully. One option is improving upon standard practices. In the professional flight community, there are clear procedures for every flight phase/objective, which pilots will perform the same way every time. Whereas, lot of GA pilots do things a little differently each time. There needs to be a set of best practices and techniques that are followed and accepted across all GA flying.
3. You flew four space shuttle missions during your 15-year tenure at NASA. Can you discuss how your experience at NASA equipped you for your subsequent roles in general aviation?
At NASA, the thing to recognize is the space shuttle was the riskiest flying machine you can contemplate. Seven million pounds of thrust lifting 5 million pounds of vehicle vertically off the ground, accelerating in 8 minutes to Mach 25 – and then reversing that in entry. The stated odds of catastrophic failure were somewhere around 1 in 200 flights. So, the entire NASA team was constantly fighting against those odds with every mission. Ultimately, there are four ways to limit risks – eliminate (change a design), transfer (place it somewhere else), mitigate (reduce
16 • TWIN & TURBINE
March 2018