FLYTOP is a training programme for accident prevention in air sports. It provides actionable courses for clubs, flight schools and pilots. Their goal is to change the behaviour of pilots, but also of organizations (i.e. flight schools and clubs) in order to prevent accidents.

FLYTOP consists of multiple courses, which are developed honorarily and conducted against reimbursement of costs.

FLYTOP assumes air sports to be multi-tier, mutiply linked systems, including the pilots.

First-hand experience in training sitautions is our method to effect a change of behaviour towards flight safety.

Find following the basics of the FLYTOP method, answering these questions:

What is modern flight safety?

What is an error?

How to teach and learn accident prevention?

 

FLYTOP Brief

FLYTOP stands for mordern high-class flight safety training in non-commercial aviation. FLYTOP has developed courses with effective methods and scientific background. Those are supposed to significantly lower the still high numbers of accidents—e.g. currently 34 fatalities per 1M flights in gliding in Switzerland. As technical reasons for accidents could be reduced to less than 1% during the last decades, the human factor is the key to enhance flight safety. Besides individual human performance, the efforts increasingly focus on communcation and the organization / the club as a whole.

Besides static (reactive) safety—i.e. compliance with rules and technical improvements—dynamic (proactive) safety needs to be established. This means catching individual errors, which occur incidentially in any human action, and do so before an accident develops! Communicating about and learning from less critical incidents and individual measures derived thereof provide a safety net, to which everybody in the pilots' environment shall contribute. The relevant techniques can and should be acquired.

Specific courses, like flight instructor training or the training of a club's management team, a comprehensive 2-day seminar for the complete club, and specific trainings in preparation of a competition are offered. Depending on the governing body, the courses may be subject to sponsoring. In any case, the organiser is called upon. The club course, in particular, requires a high participation within the club: All of the management team, 80% of all club members, and the highest possible number of spouses and parents need to get together in a suitable conference location for tow days and go through the seminar together. But this effort is worth it, as 97% of all participants attest afterwards; not only concerning flight safety and the club, but the acquired knowledge and techniques are also an asset for each individual.