My natural inclination is to look forward to the next things we can do at Flight Safety Foundation to improve aviation safety and serve our members. However, I would be remiss if I did not look back at some of the high points of 2013 — for us, a very challenging year.
When it began, our three goals were to cut unnecessary expenses, work within our budget and keep the Foundation in the forefront, promoting globally the best in aviation safety. Looking back, I can say we have met those goals and then some. How did we do that? It basically required keeping an eye on not only the top three aviation safety issues — runway excursions, loss of control–in flight and controlled flight into terrain — but also the three new accidents that appear to have involved unstabilized approaches.
We did it by closely tracking the tasks being performed by a reduced staff, constantly monitoring our expenses and evaluating how to get the widest exposure from personal appearances. We were not abl…
