Flight Operations Research is a single-pilot consultancy primarily engaged in the analysis of large sets of subjective and often incomplete safety data. The output of these analyses includes support for various government initiatives as well as support for training solutions. This website is intended to be a repository of public domain source documents which may have relevance to specific safety issues, and which may be valuable to pilots interested in gaining a broader understanding of those issues.
Years ago, the acquisition of aviation safety papers and reports could be a challenging process. But with the advent of the web, and a commitment on the part of many institutions to digitize extensive collections of material, the old reports are no longer moldering in a library basement. A comprehensive review of history, hand-in-hand with contemporary understanding, can inform and optimize the construction of best practices while promoting user acceptance and compliance. Indeed, a through understanding of why we do what we do may elevate compliance from the level of simple discipline to that of professional practice.
My principal area of investigation for the past several years has been airframe icing. The airframe icing menu selection will take you to a number of subpages, containing a variety of papers, articles and accident reports which are specific to both inflight and ground airframe icing. I have included all of the work that I have published, as well as a number of papers that I consider fundamental to the topic. I have also assembled an extensive list of accident and incident reports spanning over eighty years, and a hopefully comprehensive range of web links addressing airframe icing.
In addition to airframe icing, I have also put together a comprehensive set of references for Part 121 flight crews, in the form of advisory circulars, technical reports and specific excerpts from the FAA's Flight Standards Information System. These documents have been immensely helpful to me in developing training programs as well as just going beyond the typical content of today's classroom and distance learning.
Finally, I have organized my preferred weather information websites in the manner that I use them for daily flight operations.
All of the documents on this site will open as pdf files and can be downloaded. All are available in the public domain; however, many retain copyrights which must be respected.
"...History is linear memory and, as such, beyond organization and indifferent to reason. The characteristic common to the modern man of reason is this loss of memory; lost or rather, denied as an uncontrollable element. And if it must be remembered, then that evocation of real events is always presented as either quaint or dangerous. The past, when it involves a failed system, disappears from the mind. The past is always ad hoc. The future is always optimistic, because it is available for unencumbered solutioneering. And the present lies helpless...just begging to be managed."
John Ralston Saul
Voltaire’s Bastards
1993