Fellow flight testers,

For those that were unable to attend the Flight Test Safety Workshop in Fort Worth earlier this month, the videocasts are now available to view at flighttestsafety.org/2026-fort-worth-tx.  We had a fantastic tutorial Tuesday morning with Eric Kinney doing a deep dive into Flight Test CRM and how the FAA is training their flight test team.  There are so many great takeaways and best practices on how to make your CRM training more effective.  Well worth the watch.  In addition, we had excellent papers throughout the day on Wednesday.  You should definitely check out the Dave Houle Best Paper Award winners Christopher Caps and Dulnath Wijayratne, from Boeing Company with their presentation titled Custom Flight Test Display: Initial Deployments and Lessons Learned. 

Please remember, the FTSC requests that you handle these presentations as background material, and not as a corporate release. If you wish to use this information in a story or any other form of presentation, you must contact the presenters to ensure that the presentation material can be viewed in the proper programmatic context. The FTSC expressly forbids the use of this presented material in connection with any press release or article without the written consent of the authors.

The other big news that came out of the Workshop is the return of the Flight Test Safety Database (FTSDB), under our LLM enabled tool SAFETY NET. This has been a high priority for the board, and I am delighted to say the initial rollout has occurred.  If you visit our home page flighttestsafety.org and click on search in the top right corner, you will see an option for the Paper Database Search Tool.  Select that and it will take you to our two search tools. The tools are selectable by the drop-down menu in the top left corner. The first is the previously released FTSC Paper search tool that will look through our resources and videocasts to try and answer your query.   The second is the new Test Hazard Analysis tool.  As part of the initial rollout, the THAs are only the ones that were previously available in the FTSDB, but we have plans to add a process to submit and add more THAs to the database in the future.  Another critical element is the feedback option in the top right corner.  Please provide feedback on either tool so we can continue to tweak the LLM prompting and make it more useful to our community. 

Getting a FTSDB replacement up and running is long overdue and I appreciate your patience as we worked through the technical challenges.  I am excited about how these two tools will grow and expand in the future, helping to capture those previous lessons learned we might have otherwise missed.  As always, feel free to reach out to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have any questions or comments.

Stuart Rogerson
Chairman, Flight Test Safety Committee

NEW Episode of "On Condition" EP 77 - A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations

This month I continue my discussion with former Navy Test Pilot Eric "Pinto" Mitchell. We get into the tough question of knowing when you may no longer have "The Right Stuff".

Listen Now

Eric Mitchell's bio

You can check out the video version of this episode Here

FTSW Videocasts

The Society of Experimental Pilots is accepting abstracts for the 70th Annual Symposium & Banquet. For more info on submitting an abstract and hotel reservations, click Here

You do not need to be an SETP Member to submit an abstract, so please share with your flight test colleagues. All SETP events are open to the public.

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

New! Flight Test Safety Fact Newsletter

Dearest Reader,

It’s here.  The much acclaimed guide to finding sparkling water or other beverages, food, merriment, and running trails—all to be enjoyed during the off hours of the coming Workshop—is attached to this email.  But if you aren’t going to make it to Fort Worth, there is a lot for you to read and think about in this issue too:  Aiming for the Moon has deep thoughts about deep space and other things.

Finally, Chia Chat and Turbo’s podcast are regular features herein, as they always are.  We include them so you can print out a copy of the newsletter and put it in your breakroom, or conference room if you are brave enough to read it while the VP is briefing.

Send us questions, comments, thoughts, ideas, pictures from your merriment, and disagreements: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sincerely,

Mark Jones Jr.

You can download the pdf HERE