TBM Safety Seminar

In Aviation, Journal, Flying by Steve Sliwa

We attended the TBM Safety Seminar hosted by Avex in Camarillo CA.  We flew down on Friday afternoon and picked up friends Marcie Smith and Chris McKay to join us.  Marcie is Nancy’s flying buddy and she thought getting more up to speed on the TBM, which she co-pilots with Nancy, would be time well spent.  Chris is always networking online with his various NASA connections so he planned to use the Four Seasons resort to get some quiet time catching up on work.

Avex did a great job of hosting us, providing logistics, and transportation.  The Four Seasons setting was excellent and we enjoyed the company.  We got to spend some quality time with TBM correspondents Lon and Laura Rosado, proud new owners of a TBM-850.  We even rendezvoused with them the following week in Seattle when we had intersecting business interests.

The seminar had a number of good speakers.  I actually thought Avex founder Terry Winson was the best. 🙂  But the program was varied and interesting.  Here is the brochure for the event:  Safety Seminar Brochure.

Nancy and Marcie thought the accident descriptions and statistics were a bit gruesome.  I found it a bit less than others I had attended.  Other attendees said this one had more than the other Avex seminars.  (This is their 5th).

Nancy, Marcie, and I discussed the inputs and decided to make 2 procedural changes as a result:

  • When two pilots are up front, we will endeavor to ‘hand fly’ the plane below 10,000′.  This is the busiest time but it will be good practice.
  • We will use the CWS mode more often for changing climb or descent setting when using the autopilot.

One interesting statistic, is that there has yet to be a fatality for any TBM pilot that has attended one of these safety seminars.  Hopefully that statistic will serve us well.  🙂

We counted 41 TBMs in attendance.  Avex arranged for a picture and that is show below.  Interesting, our plane is the one in the bottom left facing forward.

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