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Federal - Air Force Flight Safety Officer

An air force flight safety officer is a specially trained Air Force pilot that has significant flight experience and works in monitoring and training for flight safety. These individuals are assigned to Air Force bases across the United States to train other pilots and aviation professionals regarding the policies and procedures of flight safety. It is important that the safety officer be a trained and experience pilot so that they can share with trainees actual experiences from a personal knowledge, not just from a training manual.

An Air Force flight safety officer also has the responsibility to respond to accidents involving aircraft for both civilian and military plans. These highly trained professionals can view a crash site, find evidence, and then complete various types of research and testing to attempt to determine exactly what lead to the crash. They may work in situations where there was only a malfunction of equipment and not a flight mishap or disaster. Through the specific training these professionals can then write reports and give recommendations to prevent this accident from happening again.

An Air Force flight safety officer will usually travel a significant part of the time and may be required to transfer posts as assigned. Many officers also continue to work as pilots in some capacity for the Air Force as well. Flight safety officers usually work at flight training center with new pilots but may also be deployed to other areas for retraining or to deal with accidents or mishaps with US military planes anywhere in the world.

Common work activities include:

• Teaching new pilots at military flight schools policies and procedures for flight safety.
• Working in teams to complete trainings to experienced pilots or aircrews.
• Traveling to various training centers as required.
• Investigating and analyzing all types of mishaps with military plans from minor mechanical failures to crashes.
• Researching, testing and confirming reasons for failures in military aircraft that leads to accidents.
• Writing reports to accurate reflect finding and making recommendations for change to prevent issues from re-occurring.

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