Successful New Missouri Wing Flight Clinic Format
Successful New Flight Clinic Format Supports Missouri Civil Air Patrol Pilots
Over thirty Missouri Wing, Civil Air Patrol, pilots from across the state gathered recently at multiple locations for a CAP Flight Clinic. In the past, these flight clinics were often held at the Columbia Regional Airport, just outside of Columbia, Missouri. However, travel distance and frequent weather problems often negatively impacted efforts to meet in a central location. So a new format was tried last year that involved multiple locations. This successful format was again used this year allowing more pilots to participate, shortened travel times, and minimized the impact of weather.
A one–day ground school was held on Saturday, August 24, at the Kansas City Downtown Airport, the Springfield Regional Airport, and the Spirit of St. Louis Airport in Chesterfield, Missouri. The day began with a welcome from the Missouri Wing commander, Col. Jennifer Smith, who spoke about the importance of the proficiency effort by CAP pilots and thanked the instructors and pilots regarding their efforts.
Ground school topics presented by CAP certified flight instructors included: accident trends, "go–arounds", CAP lessons learned, runway incursion avoidance, CAP flight releases, and best practices.
Finally, Lt. Col. (ret.) Crismon Brayman, USAF, North Central Liaison Region operations director, CAP-USAF, spoke to the oversight mission of CAP-USAF and how they are there to support and enhance the overall CAP flying experience from a safety and proficiency perspective.
CAP-USAF, headquartered at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, provides day-to-day support, advice and liaison to the Civil Air Patrol and provides oversight for CAP programs. CAP-USAF personnel are the primary functional interface between CAP and other federal agencies. In addition, CAP-USAF serves as the Air Force program office for the cooperative agreement between CAP and the Air Force. CAP-USAF falls under the First Air Force and Air Combat Command.
“In addition to the ground school that we had on Saturday, each current CAP pilot is eligible for a funded proficiency flight with an instructor. That flight can be taken anytime from mid-August until September 19th,” noted Lt. Col. Rick Veach, Missouri Wing Vice commander. “I believe that the pilots in general felt that the ground school was successful and worthwhile.”
The flight portion of the clinic was scheduled over a wide portion of time allowing pilots greater opportunities to demonstrate their ability to accompanying instructor pilots. It is hoped that locating the flight clinic at multiple sites across the state and increasing the time to perform their needed proficiency flights, will increase the number of pilots participating and ultimately the number of pilots available to support our communities in need when disasters strike.
