Episode 214: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) Webinar

Episode notes

Hear from NASA on National Drone Safety Day:

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

We're hitting pause on the Texas Robotics Summit Mini Series to share a one-time special edition of a webinar that was posted the week of April 22, 2024.

Today, you will hear from public safety industry professionals who will join NASA on National Drone Safety Day to discuss the Aviation Safety Reporting System (A-S-R-S) . You’ll hear the group talk about the current state of the industry, the need to share information, and the importance of self-reporting incidents to help benefit the UAS and aviation community as a whole. NASA ASRS is anonymous and a free tool for everyone to use.

Watch the video recording here!

And stay tuned for the return of our Mini Series!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro to this special edition
2. 0:41 Welcome and the webinar format
3. 3:23 Panel introductions
4. 11:07 The current state of data sharing and self-reporting
5. 14:23 Why report drone accidents and incidents
6. 16:17 How reporting affects safety
7. 21:42 Practical ways ASRS data can improve safety
8. 29:36 Why managing risk matters
9. 31:42 The 1974 TWA crash that led to ASRS
10. 33:27 What data collection does for drone operations
11. 40:04 Mary Keller's NASA ASRS presentation
12. 51:05 Panel questions for NASA
13. 1:00:11 Benefits, perceptions and concerns about reporting
14. 1:11:06 How to build ASRS into your operations
15. 1:17:51 Incidents that should have been reported
16. 1:26:27 Closing thoughts and resources
17. 1:35:28 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What is NASA ASRS and what does it offer drone operators?

Mary Keller explains that ASRS, the Aviation Safety Reporting System, is a voluntary, confidential, non-punitive, and independent safety reporting system operated by NASA. It allows drone operators, including public safety and commercial pilots, to report safety incidents and concerns anonymously. NASA de-identifies all reports to protect reporter confidentiality, and the FAA will not use reports for disciplinary action.

Hear it at 41:00

Why is reporting drone incidents important for public safety aviation?

Charles Werner says collecting data allows the community to see trends and address problems quickly before they become major issues. Dave Danielson adds that sharing data develops the aviation safety culture and mindset needed for proper risk mitigation, especially since many drone pilots did not come from traditional aviation backgrounds.

Hear it at 16:04

What protections does ASRS offer to drone pilots who report violations?

Mary Keller says that under FAA Advisory Circular 0046F, the FAA will not use ASRS reports for disciplinary action and extends a waiver for civil penalties and certificate action. To be eligible, reporters should file within 10 days of the violation and must not have had prior enforcement action in the last five years.

Hear it at 41:00

How can public safety agencies access and use ASRS data?

Mary Keller explains that anyone can search the publicly available ASRS online database to retrieve de-identified reports and analyze information. Users can search by date, reporter function, or keywords, and export data as Word, Excel, or other formats. Agencies can also request help from ASRS with complex searches.

Hear it at 41:00

What kinds of drone incidents should be reported to ASRS?

Mary Keller says ASRS welcomes reports on any aviation safety-related incident or concern, including close calls, equipment issues like loss of link or flyaway events, communication problems, procedural confusion, near mid-air collisions, or even operational hazards such as wires near a launch location observed during pre-flight.

Hear it at 41:00

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 214 transcript

NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) Webinar

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Charles Werner, Coitt Kessler, Dave Danielson, Dave Krauss, Fred Carlson, Greg R. (Pilot Institute), Jason Burnside, Jeff Pritchard, Justin Jager, Kyle Williams, Mary Keller, Pete York

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Hello, smart firefighting community. We got a one-time special edition from a webinar that was posted last week. Today, you will hear from public safety industry professionals who will join NASA on National Drone Safety Day to discuss the Aviation Safety Reporting System, ASRS. You'll hear the group talk about the current state of the industry, the need to share information, and the importance of self-reporting incidents to help benefit the and aviation community as a whole. NASA ASRS is an anonymous free tool for everyone to use. It was a joy to moderate the session and please make sure to check out all the show notes. Enjoy. Hello everyone and welcome today. If you're listening live, please put your name in the chat, tell us where you're from. We're really grateful and excited to have you here today to learn about some exciting stuff happening in the world of drones and public safety aviation. We have some exciting partners here from around the horn that you're going to learn about from FDNY, Austin Fire, NASA, Law Enforcement Drone Association. You're going to hear from all the speakers here in a bit. But just to kind of get us started today, I'm going to give a quick introduction. Then we're going to get into quick introductions from all the speakers. Followed by that, we're going to have an initial roundtable presentation from NASA on ASRS, the Aviation Safety Reporting System. Then it's going to go into an AAR-style roundtable where we're we're gonna ask questions about everything we learned about, and then kind of close it out with some different thoughts and action items for moving forward. So without further ado, again, wanna thank you all for being here, and just, you're probably asking, well, why are we here? Well, as drones continue to gain popularity and become integral parts of various industries, the number of drone-related accidents and incidents has also increased. Safety and accountability are paramount in the skies. as Mike O'Shea from FAA says, what's on slide number one, it's safety. So drone operators must report accidents and incidents to the FAA. In this webinar, we have an incredible panel of public safety professionals who are gonna discuss their experiences with amazing technology and how they currently report and share this knowledge and how they've gained and what they've gained from deploying drones on emergency incidents. We're also gonna explore the importance of reporting drone accidents and incidents, the legal obligations, the reporting process, and provide some essential tips for ensuring safety in the skies. We're gonna hear from NASA, who will present a walkthrough of the current state of the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System, ASRS, to inform us of the existing tools that the drone pilots can use to self-report safety issues. And then finally, we will do a roundtable, this discussion on what the public safety sees as a future of safety reporting, the positives of contributing to the culture of aviation safety, and need to improve upon the technologies that are increasingly used in our community. So I already kind of mentioned this at the beginning, but format, we're now gonna do quick introductions from everyone. Then we're gonna do a round table, 10 minute presentation from NASA on ASRS, and then an AAR style. So we're gonna close this up as well with just some what to do from here, what you're gonna do different on Monday type action items. So without further ado, I'm your moderator, Kevin Sofen, co-founder of smartfirefighting.com, working with partners like ISC, Darley, and Ascent, and just really grateful to be the moderator here today. And so now we're gonna go around the horn here with just 30-second intros from everyone. So I'm looking around, and I'm just gonna kind of popcorn call on you. We'll go Kyle, Charles, and Jason for the first three.

[3:35] Kyle Williams: Hi, Kevin, thank you, and thank everybody for having us here and being a part of this. My name's Kyle Williams. I'm a police sergeant here in Eugene, Oregon, in Western Oregon, 20 years this year. I'm also the vice president of the Law Enforcement Drone Association. My agency started down the road of UAS integration in 2018. We certainly have had our fair share of incidents that we've shared out through other channels and through the Law Enforcement Drone Association of what was an active working group in the PNW before that. I'm excited to have this system in place so that we can continue to share that knowledge and be able to have a better place to memorialize all of these learning lessons that we get from these sorts of incidents because it's something that we have definitely leaned on the Law Enforcement Drone Association. As we've encouraged in aviation safety culture, one of our first classes at our first conference was literally aviation safety culture because it is such an important thing for UAS operators to understand that when we're in the skies we're all out there together and it's an important topic so thank you.

[4:33] Kevin Sofen: Thanks Kyle.

[4:34] Charles Werner: Hey everybody my name is Charles Werner I'm the retired fire chief from Charlesville, Virginia and current director of drone responders and I think Kyle kind of hit the main point is we're all here for is about aviation safety and also building the culture of aviation in this new world of UAS. So glad to be here.

[4:50] Jason Burnside: Hey, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity. My name is Jason Burnside. I'm a firefighter with the Austin Fire Department, and I'm the Program Manager for the Austin Fire Department's Robotics Emergency Deployment Team, or RED Team for short. Our program is 10 years old, and I have a remote pilot certificate as well as a private pilot certificate. I look forward to engaging in this conversation.

[5:10] Kevin Sofen: Both are with Dave Krauss, Greg R, then Coitt.

[5:14] Dave Krauss: Hi, everyone. My name is Dave Krauss. I co-own a company called Influential Drones. We are one of the industry members with the FAA Safety Team. Many people know that we go around the country promoting aviation safety and working with public safety organizations. What I like to say about safety culture is it's something that we need to do as a community when no one's looking. So this is a really exciting seminar. Happy to be on board and all talk together. This is an opportunity for us to share the problems we have with each other so that we can improve the industry.

[5:43] Greg R. (Pilot Institute): Greg R. here from Pilot Institute, been a fly instructor for over 20 years now. And then also obviously teaching drone pilots to do the right thing and learn how to fly safely in the airspace. So I'm happy to be here and listen to what everyone has to say. I've been dealing with ASRS on the man aircraft aviation for quite a while. And yeah, looking forward to bringing this technology on the drone side as well and having more people join and use them.

[6:07] Coitt Kessler: Hey y'all, Coitt Kessler from Austin, Texas, retired Austin firefighter, was the program manager for the Austin Fire Department's red team or the robotic emergency deployment team. I am currently the chair for the ISF ISC robotics working group. Couldn't be happier to be here when a couple of our amigos, Dave Danielson and Jeff Pritchard took on the ASRS reporting. I just thought, man, we're going in the right direction so fast, so well. And now to be surrounded by this group of people hearing the aviation safety mind culture and understanding just how important this is and grabbing onto partners with NASA and seeing this move forward is so motivating. I'm really appreciative of this opportunity and looking forward to the rest of this webinar.

[6:58] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, Coitt. Likewise, fired up. And so next we'll go the duo on screen, Jeff Pritchard and Pete York, and then after that we'll go to Mary Keller.

[7:06] Jeff Pritchard: Good afternoon everyone. Jeff Pritchard, I'm the Fire Chief with the Scappoose Fire District. I'm also the Program Manager for the Regional Disaster Preparedness Program in the metro area of Portland, Oregon. And I also serve in various leadership positions with several of the groups represented here and honored and privileged to be able to collaborate in this really unique effort to continue to promote aviation safety and the culture which is equally important to everyone in the public safety community and beyond. So thank you for the opportunity.

[7:39] Pete York: And hello everyone my name is Pete York with CAL FIRE the UAS battalion chief for operations statewide. I'm super excited to be a part of this webinar today. I think the just reporting culture is super important for our community as UAS operators and pilots so we can all take the lessons learned and apply those to our programs to reduce programmatic risk.

[8:01] Mary Keller: Hello, everyone. I'm Mary Keller. I'm the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System, ASRS, project manager. My background includes being a pilot, flight ground instructor, and safety manager in other roles. At ASRS, I manage a team of analysts and oversee the processing of all the reports we get, including UAS and uncrewed operations reports. And I also make sure they're all properly de-identified to protect reporter confidentiality, as that's the topmost priority at ASRS. I also oversee the equality and make sure the safety products that ASRS provides to the aviation community are of the highest quality.

[8:42] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, Mary. And the final two, Fred Carlson, then Justin Jager.

[8:47] Fred Carlson: Hey, thanks, Kevin. My name's Fred Carlson. I'm a lieutenant with the New York City Fire Department. Started with our robotics and drone program in 2017 and I got myself promoted and I am no longer a pilot I am middle management, but I totally bring on the idea of safety We're in the business of helping people and collecting data. And this is what this really fits in both of those worlds I also wear multiple hats a part of the incident management team and I am assisting with the FEMA you star teams and their drone Development so I have a lot of a lot of wants and needs and I see where a lot of this information could go to help a great many people. So I'm happy to be here.

[9:22] Justin Jager: Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Justin Jager, I'm the Regional Aviation Manager for the National Park Service Intermountain Region, but here today representing the Interagency Fire UAS Subcommittee as the chair that's nested under the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. And yeah, just really happy to be here, part of this interagency collaboration for overall aviation safety. Appreciate the invite.

[9:44] Kevin Sofen: And did I miss Dave Danielson, the most important?

[9:48] Dave Danielson: Oh, man, not with this group. It's an amazing panel. We got together here. So hello, everybody, Dave Danielson. I just recently retired from Los Angeles Fire Department as the lead remote pilot in development of our drone program. I had 26 years in the Navy as a helicopter crew chief, where certainly all of the concepts that we're going to talk about today regarding aviation safety, I was fortunate enough to live. When we talk about crew resource management, aeronautical decision thinking, operational risk mitigation, these things are so very important. And the topic that we have is so essential on bringing it all together for us in a process for which we develop airmanship, the mindset, and standardization. So currently, I am taking all of my experience, I'm working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, the development of aerial test methods to further create tools that we have as drone pilots to further intersect into the national airspace as partners with what currently exists. So, Ken, thanks so much. We got a great crew today, and I'm looking forward to this.

[11:07] Kevin Sofen: Well, I'm fired up to be here, and as you can see, this is a star-studded crew. We have 13 people here total, and so we just did introductions. You got a little snippet of what's going on here. I'm gonna set a timer on my watch, and for the next 20 to 25 minutes, we're gonna do a little bit of an open round table. And I'm reminding and asking the speakers again, I'm gonna start directing a few questions, but we'll try and keep responses to 30 to 120 seconds on the high end, because we wanna hear from everyone. And if you hear something great, raise your hand, raise your virtual or physical hand, and let's kind of keep the mojo and energy going here. So we're talking a lot here about the current state of data sharing and the self-reporting in the drone ecosystem or lack thereof. I'm looking at Jeff Pritchard and Coitt here kind of for the start us off here of what is the current state of data sharing and self-reporting in the drone ecosystem and kind of help us set the stage here. I'll throw it to you first, Jeff and Coitt, please follow second.

[12:03] Jeff Pritchard: Okay, well, when we look at the ecosystem that we've created for UAS, at least in public safety, there's lots of information out there on what to do in terms of training and what type of aircraft to have. And there are some things that we started to notice across the spectrum when it comes to trends that people aren't really aware of, you know, and this is something that Chief Werner has looked at, you know, Dave Danielson is very passionate about, the leader group has also looked at, as well as the Interagency Fire UAS subcommittee. And I think having an opportunity to participate with all these different groups has sort of brought to the surface the need to start to share and collaborate even more, and the question was how do we do that? And I'm happy to say, you know, Coitt, you know, who started the robotics work group, he was the one that sort of pulled this all together. So, Coitt, you want to take it on from here?

[13:02] Coitt Kessler: Well, I'm very lucky to, as I mentioned earlier, to be surrounded by all you knuckleheads. You know, thinking about this, I don't know, I think about this all the time, it's almost like the Wild West. I know we've heard, talked about this before. We're all trying to make it out west, we're trying to, we know that there's glory, there's all this goodness that we're going out to find. As the industry is growing, we're working our way to that goal. We're understanding now as we're getting closer and closer that we can't do that without data. It's impossible to get to that place where we need to be without data collection. We're aviation. UAS is public safety, is public safety aviation. And we have to be able to reflect that by being in the national airspace and doing what aviation has been doing from its inception, and that is collecting good information so we can make good informed decision making. And that's only going to be done by us getting together like this, getting our information back out to our people, and collecting that information so we can make some good decisions from that. So I have a lot of hope in this, and this panel is a great jumping off point. Thanks, guys.

[14:11] Kevin Sofen: And for, during the world of COVID and using Zoom, we all have those backgrounds. We're like, oh, wow, I wish I was there. But quite your background, you are where we wish we were. Then that's looking, got pump rooms there. So that's quite nice. So to continue on that, this whole, the importance of reporting drone accidents and incidents. I mean, for someone that I'm a drone enthusiast, I'm a practitioner of it. And then even the other day I was talking with a home inspector who's flying drones. And obviously there's a wide range of how and why people use drones for the sake of, obviously, with public safety aviation. Why is it important to report drone accidents and incidents? I want to throw this to Dave Krauss and Greg R first. Dave and Greg.

[14:54] Dave Krauss: I think as Coitt had touched upon, data drives all decision-making. In order for us to grow our industry together, it's important that we share our successes as well as our failures. That level of accountability builds a safety culture, not just for us as a community, but for others that are watching us, which includes the regulators.

[15:19] Greg R. (Pilot Institute): Yeah. I'm going to add to this. I've been in countless meetings with the FAA where they ask, well, where's the data? Everybody says that drone flying is safe, or if there are issues, what are those type of issues? If we don't collect the data, we'll never be able to share it with the people that are making the regulation. On the main aircraft side of things, we have part 21 where aircraft gets certified. And when something happens, the FAA can issue information to those aircraft owners and say, hey, listen, you need to be checking on this and checking on this because that aircraft can fail. We don't have that on the drone site. This is the closest thing that we have to collecting data that's gonna be centralized and anonymized, which is very important. So yeah, super important that we report all that information.

[16:02] Kevin Sofen: Charles.

[16:04] Charles Werner: Yeah, I think I just wanna add to it, by collecting this data, we get to see trends and we get to see problems that are popping up that we can actually take action on very quickly. Whereas if we don't know about it, we can't address it.

[16:14] Kevin Sofen: What's that age old phrase? If you don't measure it, you can't manage it. And so one of the questions we talked about is reporting in general. How does reporting affect safety? We talked about, again, right there, measuring trends and we can maybe take action, but restating this question, how does reporting affect safety? And I'll kind of here look at Mary, are also with Dave Danielson and Mary.

[16:36] Dave Danielson: So I wanted to get to the culture of it and it has to do, I'm going to come back onto my experience as a firefighter, is that when I'm working with a seasoned crew, a trained crew, and we're going to an incident and we start developing our conditions, actions, and needs, that we're pulling upon our experience and we're making decisions. Now, again, pulling back on previous experience as an aviator, when you have crew that, from the pilots to everybody that's inside that aircraft, understanding the human factor, equipment factor, environmental factors that we're flying in, it develops a synergy that leads to proper aeronautical decision making. And why this matters for the drone space is, for most of the time, it's a single operator. We will have visual observers and we'll have other people trained, but we're putting a disruptive technology into the national airspace that doesn't have the benefit of the culture of aviation. And a lot of times you have manufacturers that aren't even seeing themselves as an aviation company yet. They're a consumer electronic and they're not necessarily thinking about the design of that platform and you have the pilot themselves that didn't come from aviation culture. So what we need to do is promote using data and develop that culture that gets the mindset going towards risk mitigation. If you have additional bodies crew resource management, get the mindset there so it's a properly reactive mindset to fly and mitigate whatever nature throws at us when we're flying our equipment.

[18:27] Kevin Sofen: Both Mary, then Kyle.

[18:29] Mary Keller: Well, from the ASRS perspective, one of the biggest benefits of the data that ASRS reports have is that reporters often share their lessons learned and offer perhaps best practices or insights as to why an event occurred the way it did. And even though it could be a single operator, or perhaps it could be a multi crew operation, by sharing that kind of information, anybody who reads that de-identified report in the database can glean lessons from it, right? You might have a little nugget of information embedded in that report or reports that you can say, wow, this applies to my operation. I realize if we change this procedure or we tweak the checklist this way or something, we can avoid the situation in the first place in our operations. So, and also, you know, all the safe reporting contributes to this growing body of UAS safety data in the ASRS database. And that's really what we're trying to do is encourage UAS, you know, any drone pilots and operators to submit reports so we can grow that body of data. It's so important.

[19:37] Kevin Sofen: Kyle, then Charles.

[19:39] Kyle Williams: So easy. It's just a focus. It's easy in this discussion to focus on the safety component, because that's what we're all here for is a safety component. But there's so much new stuff that new technologies, so many new procedures, so many new ways of deploying UAS that when we're sharing this information we're also helping each other to be more efficient and rather than all of us working in a vacuum and having that 10 or 20 of us across the country having the same problem, running into the same technical glitch that causes a failure or a crash, even if there isn't a safety component to it, that's dollars lost, it's efficiency lost. We've seen the value that U.S. brings to public safety and when an aircraft is down it's not able to be deployed and so we can be learning from whether it was a goof up on our end or an atmospheric condition that's a little bit unusual. We had one this winter were really pushed out to our membership. We had an unusual realm where in Oregon, we were having a lot more icing conditions on the props, which just isn't something that we have generally seen with our systems. And we were able to identify a couple of one crash, one near crash and push that out. And while none of those really created a safety hazard, it definitely allows us to just be more efficient, more judicious with the public's dollars and make sure that our equipment is effective and ready to go when we're trying to actually deploy it. and that we don't have those problems in a more emergent system or situation.

[20:59] Charles Werner: Yeah, and I'll just add that I think that our goal here, as you see everybody here, is a message of unity, is that our goal is not only to have people put information into the ASRS, but also for us to be able to take reports and to push out to each of our respective organizations so that we can share that message without people having to necessarily go and look for themselves.

[21:19] Kevin Sofen: Kath and Pete.

[21:20] Jeff Pritchard: Yeah, just one last thing real quick to add. I think one of the other really important components that I think we're all trying to promote here as well is the culture of reporting, which is something that hasn't really been taught from the beginning with folks who are going through their Part 107. And that's a powerful message, especially looking at all the people here.

[21:42] Kevin Sofen: So I'm looking at some of the active first responders right now that are in the weeds doing this. And we've been talking a lot about the nuances of why it's important. I'd love to kind of hear some maybe practical use case and maybe firsthand experience. What are some of the ways that ASRS data can be used to improve safety? Maybe what's a way that maybe it didn't happen in the past or had you done it could have helped improve safety. I'm looking at Jason from the red team in Austin, Fred from FDNY and Pete York from Cal Fire. So if you wanna go in that order, again, sort of, how can this data be used to kind of enhance safety or how was something you maybe would have reported that you wish you would have, Jason?

[22:20] Jason Burnside: Yeah. I think it's one of those things where early on, as you're building out these programs, you feel like you're kind of on your own. There's trying to figure it all out, and there's so much to kind of absorb and to learn. When you have a resource like a place that you can go to and look to see, not only to be transparent about issues you're having, but to look to see if other people are having similar issues. And like we talked about earlier, to see those trends, we can push out that information more efficiently. Even just on a local level, we have a really good relationship with our other partners. And so if we experience something, we do our best to push that out, not only to our team internally, but send it out to the region so that our other partners, you know, can really start to, you know, look to see if they have similar issues, or be aware, or even it's just a good lesson learned. And the fact that we now have, we start implementing, you know, doing that same thing, but now on a national level, the reach with this information is going to be so much more robust. I hope that, you know, through this discussion and through people hopefully realizing that this is something that's safe to do, it's encouraged, it's best practice, we're only going to make everyone better by, you know, going this route and making this a part of our normal reporting.

[23:38] Kevin Sofen: Well said. Fred?

[23:41] Fred Carlson: It's funny that Kyle brought up the icing of the props. We had a similar issue in New York City where it was a couple of days at dew point was getting a little close to the temperature, and it was just talking back and forth. And I think I was on an IFF robotics work group call, and Jeff Pritchard said, hey, I had the same problem out here in my department, and just talking back and forth. And it's just simple data like that you come across other people in the space that are operating like we are, and you're not in a bubble. So just the ability to share it across the board. We have not really lost, knock on wood, too many aircraft along the way, but we always did our own in-house reporting. We use a third-party software to pull the flight data, and we were looking at stick inputs, we're looking at battery temperatures, you know, voltage across the cells, just trying to figure out on our own how we got into the position that we lost an aircraft. And it's something that needs to be shared. I mean, Dave Danielson said it best that in the aviation community that's protocol. Something goes wrong in the sky, you need to report it. And without that data available to readily share amongst each other, it's kind of frightening. So if we can learn and move forward together safer and make the FAA happy and us happy and keep our citizens and our jurisdictions safer and happier, you know, this is definitely what needs to happen.

[24:57] Kevin Sofen: I want to throw it to Pete York. I broke that question to you and then we'll look at Dave and then Greg. Pete?

[25:03] Pete York: Yeah, great question. We've seen this and I think Kyle and Fred have both hit it and, you know, the icing event for most of us that work in those environments is pretty real. And we actually did some reporting out on that with a different system but I think one of the other key pieces to this whole program and then Mary will definitely jump in on it is the fact that you can go data mine the system and kind of see where the trends are at and we've seen you know historically through these type of reporting systems you know the more data you get the more you see a trend potentially earlier versus us having these calls where you just happen to know each other in the industry so you know look at the prop strikes and then we look at motor failures after so many hours and so as from a fleet management and again, back to programmatic risk, being able to data mine the system, which Mary will get into, allows you as a manager to look at like, hey, okay, we fly that particular aircraft and we've seen a trend at this many hours, maybe the PMs are off and so we need to adjust our flight hours and maybe do a different inspection before we move on. And so I think there's a lot of value and I think encouraging people to report only helps all of us at the end of the day, be able to see the data and actually make better decisions on it, which was already spoken to.

[26:08] Kevin Sofen: Dave Danielson and then Greg.

[26:10] Dave Danielson: Yeah, so I'll offer definitely a positive what this data reporting or safety reporting does for us using a Los Angeles fire department incident early on. We didn't know what we didn't know, but we had an existing air operations program and we had an incident for which our helicopters could not fly due to weather restrictions. It was an aircraft that went down. Won't go into the specifics other than we had potential of an ejected body for which the helicopters couldn't fly due to weather. Our drones were available, however, we were going to bust weather restrictions on it. So we certainly used our resources, contacted SOSC desk and discussed the option of having a weather restriction waiver for which my pilot went out, flew, kept it low level, got direct line of sight onto the victim of it and was able to accomplish the mission. What this did was two points. One, we understood we busted the fart. We had a weather restriction. So we reported it through ASRS, Aviation Safety Reporting System, showing our due diligence. We identified a problem, we communicated what that was and how we mitigated it. That's exactly the airmanship, the culture that we want to promote. It's out there. The second part was creating the discussion that in absence of a major resource like our air operations, we still have assets to support the community. And it elevated our drone program in a way that said, yes, we need to have further relationship with air operations and fly right. That's what this whole thing was about.

[27:49] Greg R. (Pilot Institute): Great. I also want to mention the equipment failure. We've had quite a few customers of ours reach out to us lately and saying they've been having battery issues with some of their drone and a drone falls out of the sky. This is absolutely something that needs to be reported so we can start to see a trend for possibly a specific brand or a specific model of aircraft and to help the manufacturers figure out that this is actually happening and maybe we'll see a change in quality of some of these products.

[28:16] Kevin Sofen: We got a couple other hands up. Dave, if you want to go again or not sure if you, it's continuing and then Dave Krauss and Charles Werner. Then I'm going to ask a pivot question to Justin Jager here in a sec. So Dave Krauss and Charles, and the floor is yours.

[28:31] Dave Krauss: When I look at the industry, I realize that what we're doing is just flying computers. And in every software update and everything that's happening in the industry, much like Greg had touched upon, we have firmware updates. And if we don't use test methods, if we don't start communicating the problem that we see in this industry, the reality is we're not going to fly. And you know, you talk to people who talk about safety and the safest thing to do is not fly. So we all enjoy being in the sky, we all enjoy using this asset for the benefit of the industry and to give those that are giving service to others or supporting the community, we need to be in the air. So it's important that we understand what the problems are and we share that information so that we can move forward properly together.

[29:17] Charles Werner: I'll just add that I think that what we're seeing is we have so many new products, so many new aircraft, so many different payloads, that without this kind of reporting, a lot of things will continue on until it really becomes a problem. So being that we're seeing so much evolution, it's important to get it quickly.

[29:35] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, Charles. And one question that I've been wanting to hear from Justin, I mean, and frankly, all across public safety, we talk about managing risk. And this is, we're talking about how can reporting help us manage risk? I've heard the term trend a lot. But Justin, just kind of in your perspective and your role and why, this may sound like a cliche question, but like, why is it important to manage risk? And how can we manage risk within this public safety aviation context? And we kind of love to hear that from your context and your role.

[30:03] Justin Jager: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, managing risk, obviously extremely important. Anything that we're doing in the national airspace, we should be doing a real thorough risk assessment before any operations up there. You know, the last thing we want is any kind of aviation incident accident with manned aircraft or otherwise. And so, you know, that why is risk management important? That, you know, across the board to have a better program, we have to be managing our risk out there. And so within the manned side of the house or the most aviation, we're doing SMS. We have policy, it starts in good policy, sound policy that makes sense. Our training, deliver risk assessments, doing our quality assurance, quality control, and then that safety promotion. And this is a big part of that. When we talk about ASRS or our non-punitive self-reporting system, whatever that is, to get that data, to make sure people feel empowered to have that culture, not just a safety culture, but a culture of wanting to learn from our incidents, accidents, mistakes, or ones that could have been incidents, accidents, mistakes. So it's extremely important that we don't have to keep re-learning the same lessons over and over for our different agencies. I see a lot of folks on this webinar here that we all play in a little bit different roles. I'm in the wildland fire federal world, and some of us are playing in the saw world or the law enforcement world or structure and whatnot. So be able to collaborate like this and share our incidents, accidents like that. Again, so we're not working in silos and we can learn and then move forward as an interagency group out there in the airspace.

[31:30] Kevin Sofen: Well, curiosity is often a great business strategy, a life strategy and being able to learn from past mistakes and the idea of never letting a crisis go to waste is something that I think is something we can all agree upon. But then I'm curious a little bit of the history here of, was there an event or something that spurred the development of ASRS? I think, Mary, I want to look to you here, and then anyone else give context too after we kind of hear maybe some background story on ASRS.

[31:57] Mary Keller: Absolutely. So the seminal event happened in December of 1974. TWA Flight 514 was inbound to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. in poor weather. The flight crew misunderstood an ATC clearance, and they descended prematurely. They impacted a mountain, which they couldn't see due to the clouds. And unfortunately, the lives of all on board were lost. And a few weeks earlier, it turned out a flight from a different airline was basically inbound on the same arrival and they had a similar ATC misunderstanding, but they actually missed the mountain. Those pilots from that airline reported that mishap to their carrier and then they in turn alerted their crews to the hazard. So they shared the information internally. But at the time of the event, there was really no means of sharing organizations across organizational boundaries about safety hazards and issues and concerns. And so the information about that specific approach and the hazards kind of stayed internal to a TWA and it wasn't shared out. And so to address the information sharing gap, the FAA decided it would be beneficial to all sectors of the aviation community to create a voluntary safety reporting system. This then led to a partnership with NASA as the agency to act as the independent third party and the honest broker to administer the ASRS program.

[33:20] Kevin Sofen: Thank you for that context. And frankly, we're going to dive into that more here. And Mary, you're going to take the floor here in a bit, but I want to ask one more sort of final question in this initial roundup at the round table. We're at 23 minutes, we're kind of on schedule, but this idea of, and this is sort of open to everyone, and maybe kind of quick rapid fire AAR style of, what does data collection and analysis do to support your drone operations? I know that's kind of already been said, but maybe thinking of, again, in your own words, kind of 30-second responses here, what does data collection and analysis do to support your drone operations? Throw it to Fred first.

[33:56] Fred Carlson: For me, it validates our decision to buy certain types of aircraft. Some are more proven, have more hours, have less problems. When we're flying over New York City with a population of close to 8 million people, I wanna make sure I have what's gonna stay in the sky and gives me the most control over the drone or fixed wing or whatever the asset may be. So for us, really, I need to validate why we're purchasing what we're purchasing. And it also validates why we wouldn't purchase something else if they're having problems or if their communications aren't up to snuff. So for me, it's definitely, it brings the dollars to the donuts. I'm able to prove why I'm purchasing what I'm purchasing, which goes a long way when you're spending the government and your citizens' money.

[34:37] Kevin Sofen: Looking around the horn, who am I going to volunteer next? Again, what does data collection analysis do to support your drone operations. Dave Danielson and then Coitt.

[34:45] Dave Danielson: I don't know how to follow Fred because that's a major one right there, right? And especially what Chief Werner had brought up regarding, you know, it's exponential on the equipment, the software, everything is changing so dramatically. And that's what makes UAS different in the aviation space as a whole is, you know, what started as a disruptive technology has now merged into the national airspace and we have to justify why we're doing what we're doing so that the leadership of each organization or industry leadership is making good choices and is developing partnerships that continues moving aviation safety forward, developing pilots that have a mindset that is correct and flying right, and it's just going to be an ongoing process. So using that data to tell the story and give leadership the facts to be able to make good decisions that are fiscally responsible and appropriate for the decision-making of, in public safety, an incident commander. I don't need my chief to be a pilot, but I do need him to understand that there is a predictable behavior that he is going to see when I'm flying a drone to support his efforts.

[36:04] Kevin Sofen: Well said, and Coitt, I know you came off mute for a sec, so Coitt, I'll throw it to you, then Pritchard and York, and then Charles.

[36:11] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, just, you know, I'm going to speak on the behalf of our decision makers at the legislative level and, you know, thinking, I'm just going to, again, just try to say this a different way, both Dave and Fred just said it, is we've got to collect the data so our legislators and the folks that are helping us ensure that we have our funding have the correct information and that they are receiving truthful facts, data-driven facts that support the safest aircraft in the sky in operations that are needed to support our communities and keep the airspace safe. It's got to be data-driven.

[36:48] Kevin Sofen: What's on slide one? Safety.

[36:51] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, safety.

[36:52] Kevin Sofen: Jeff and Pete, then Charles.

[36:54] Jeff Pritchard: Okay. I think one of the other components of the data collection, at least from our perspective, and I'm going to let Pete expand on this in a second, but training. There's a lot we can learn from events, whether they're good or bad, and how we can data mine and take action on what we need to do better on the training side of things to help our pilots be successful and to continue to build trust climate when we're working with the crewed aviation community. Because that's one component we haven't really talked about just yet, but we have to prove to them that we are pilots just as much as the FAA looks at us and they're like, you're a pilot. So Pete?

[37:34] Pete York: Yeah. We were laughing because we were both in the same lane on this. Definitely the data, is our training working? Are you meeting benchmarks? Are there gaps in training nationwide? We all tend to try to look at doing somewhat the same stuff, I'd hope, to get our folks trained up, but definitely could see where the gaps are in our training and the QA, C part of that. Also, I think it's really important to touch on the, we'll call it the attaboy side of the house. know, finding, you know, potential problems during a walk around part of the checklist and you find a flaw or a bolt missing or something's gone awry between the first pre flight inspection and that next hop. And so being able to report out like, hey, you know, these folks are doing their walk arounds between battery swaps, and they're able to find this which potentially mitigated a, you know, an issue in the air by catching this on the ground. And so also able to kind of prop up Yeah, training does work. And we're actually catching things because we're following checklists, we're following our training. And so kind of just reemphasizes to the community that checklists are important and pre-flights are important because here's an example why this was a success. And so I think you can use the delayed data in a lot of different ways. And so it doesn't all have to be to the point of trying to create the next, solve the next riddle so you don't have the next mishap. But I think there's a lot of things that we can use the data for to show that we are actually training our folks in a certain way that's actually being positive and we can reinforce that.

[38:48] Kevin Sofen: Right, so I wanna do a couple more quick rapid fire Charles to you, and I'm looking at Jason and Justin, and then we're going to transition into Mary's part. So Charles, Jason, and Justin, kind of finish this off here.

[39:01] Charles Werner: Yeah, this is really quick. I think everybody here is about prevention. Our goal is to prevent any bad things from happening, and by learning from the information that comes from the other mishaps or the near misses gives us that opportunity to do that. Because we're so new at this, we're one really bad accident away from stopping all of us

[39:18] Jason Burnside: from what we're doing. Yeah, that's a great point, Charles. And I think one of the kind of side benefits of this is that when we incorporate this into our report writing and our day-to-day practice is showing the public that we are transparent. I know that there are still a lot of fears out there with certain organizations or agencies having this kind of technology and being transparent about our mishaps, our learned lessons and things like that, and having that be part of your program, I think is essential.

[39:50] Justin Jager: Yeah, I would just end it, you know, everyone's done a real good job of talking about it. I always tell my folks data drives decisions and that's the way we go with it. You don't have the data. you can't make those good decisions like everyone's been saying. So data drives decisions.

[40:04] Kevin Sofen: And Mike dropped that down. We could be done now. That's all. That was the good comments and why we're all here. And so now again, kind of run a show. We've been a little bit long on this, but hey, this is some fire content. So sue me, you know, this is good content. My job is to kind of keep it going and allow this to flourish. So it's been really valuable content. So now we're going to throw it over to Mary Keller from NASA. We're going to have a little quick presentation. So get your popcorn ready. Tune in for this right now. I have a couple questions that I have ready to ask, Mary, but at the same time, Mary, I think you'll cover it all. So, Mary, the floor is yours. We are listening and excited.

[40:40] Mary Keller: Great. Thank you so much, Kevin. Again, I'm the ASRS project manager, and I want to welcome you to the presentation I'm about to share on the NASA Aviation Safe Reporting System. We're very excited to have this opportunity to collaborate with your community in developing a robust safety reporting culture.

[40:58] Kevin Sofen: And we can see your screen, so you're good to go.

[41:00] Mary Keller: Thank you. So a little background on NASA ASRS. First, we operate on four main principles. We're a voluntary, confidential, non-punitive, and independent safety reporting system. We receive reports from people throughout the aviation system encompassing all aspects on the ground and in the air. Reports from UAS operators include public operators, part one of seven commercial operators, recreational hobbyists and others. And in addition to UAS reports, we receive reports from pilots, ATC dispatchers, cabin crew, ground operations and maintenance technicians. NASA serves as an independent third party to receiving process safety reports. NASA operates separately from employers, certificate holders and regulators to ensure that the identities of reporters are not shared with those entities. When you share your safety concern or incident in an ASRS safety report, we protect your confidentiality by removing all details that could reveal your identity or the identity of third parties, such as your name, company name, and any aspects unique to your operations. The FAA only receives the identified reports from ASRS. The reports that are available in the ASRS database offer the UAS and drone community the opportunity to glean lessons learned and best practices that other reporters have shared. This in turn can support UAS operations and their safe integration into airspace. NASA's been operating this program since 1976 and has received more than 2.2 million reports to date. There's no limit to the number reports that you can submit, and all reports are welcome. We welcome reports describing any type of aviation safety-related incident or concern. When you focus in on UAS and drone operations, these of course can include close calls, hazards and violations. Some examples would be communication issues, equipment issues such as a loss link or a flyaway event, procedural confusion, or near mid-air collision. We encourage you to report anything related to aviation safety, whether you were involved in an incident, observed one, or just want to report an operational hazard, such as wires nearby the launch location. ASRS offers a UAS report form tailored specifically for those types of operations. We encourage all UAS crews to use the report form to tell us about incidents and safety concerns. Whether you're a public operator, Part 107 or Part 135 operator, or flying recreationally, your report does matter. In addition to reporting an incident, you can also share best safety practices, lessons learned, and contribute to building a robust repository of UAS-related safety data. Advisory Circular 0046F governs the operation and scope of ASRS. In April 2021, it was updated to extend the immunities and protections of ASRS safety reporting to UAS operators. The advisory circular describes the use restrictions and the waiver of imposition of sanction. In exchange for safety information in the de-identified reports, the FAA will not use reports for disciplinary action and they also extend a waiver for the imposition of sanctions, including civil penalties and certificate action. The advisory circular also states that the FAA considers the filing of a report with NASA ASRS to be indicative of a constructive attitude towards safety. To be eligible for the protections offered under the advisory circular, reporters should report within 10 days of the violation or when they first became aware of the violation. A person also must not have any prior enforcement action by the FAA involving a violation in the last five years. ASRS provides five different report forms. Each is tailored to a different type of operation and can be found on our website at the link on the top left of this page. The form shown here is the UAS report form. This can be used by UAS pilots, including public operators, commercial operators, recreational hobbyists, flyers, and any crew participating in UAS or in crewed operations. If there are several crew members who want to report in the same event, such as remote pilot in command and visual observer, they would each submit their own reports. The four additional forms are a general report form that's used by pilots, dispatchers, and ground personnel, a cabin crew form, a maintenance form, and an air traffic control form. The very top of the report form is the ID strip, which is your proof of report submission. This comes back in the U.S. mail to you after we receive your report and do our analysis. The form also asks you to provide fixed field information. These are the details of the event, such as weather conditions, the UAS make-model, and the airspace you were flying in. These details help provide a more complete picture for ASRS report analysis. And then lastly, at the very bottom of the form, there's an open section, the narrative. This is where you can describe your event in your own words. In this section, we encourage you to provide as much information as you're comfortable sharing. So next up, to share a few tips for writing a safety report. There's a couple of examples here. On the left, the example is a fairly short narrative, has a lot of basic information, but not much detail. The example on the right has more detail and therefore more information. It's valuable to ASRS during our report analysis to understand the who, the where, the when, the what and the why of your event. In this example, we can tell this person was flying in the daytime, they were in an open field in uncontrolled airspace, we know their altitude, and we know what role they played during the operation. And they've also offered us some insight as to why they think the incident happened. Together, this information provides a very complete picture. It can be used by others who read the de-identified report to understand the safety issue and develop mitigations and corrective actions to prevent it from happening in their operations. Next, I'd like to overview the ASRS report processing steps. ASRS receives reports continually. When a report arrives, either electronically or as a paper report, it's read within three to five working days by ASRS expert analysts to rapidly identify systemic safety issues and hazards so that these can be forwarded to a person with authority to further investigate and address the safety issue. After that, we look for multiple reports in the same event. For example, if we have a report from the RPIC and one from the VO, we'll match them to provide a richer understanding of the event. The reports then analyze and coded by our analysts using hundreds of code options. The coding allows us to easily find reports with common topics and issues such as lost link events. After analysis and coding, we de-identify the reports. analysts remove personal and company information and any revealing flight details. Then the ID strip is mailed back to the reporter in the U.S. mail. The ID strip can be furnished by the reporter to the FAA to be eligible for the protections and immunities of the advisory circular. The reporter should keep their ID strip in a safe place. It only needs to be furnished if the FAA were to contact you. We also have a lot of great safety products that come out of our program. We issue hundreds of alert bulletins on an annual basis to share out de-identified reports to those in a position with authority to resolve the safety concerns. We hold FAA and NTSB teleconferences to discuss emergency concerns. We maintain a publicly available online database with all the de-identified reports to get full form analysis. Anyone can search this database to glean lessons learned and best practices that will make their operations safer. We also publish safety newsletters and participate in industry meetings. This is the interface for the ASRS public database online tool. It can be found on the ASRS website. Anyone can access the tool and conduct searches, retrieve reports, and analyze information. The information can then be exported as a Word file, Excel file, or comma separated values format, depending on your needs. For example, you could search for all UAS reports received within a certain timeframe under date of incident. If you wanted to customize your search a bit more, for example, say looking for lost link flyaway events, you could search using a combination of other fields such as reporter function RPIC and result aircraft lost link. You can see there's a number of other types of fields available there if you wanted to search on those also. Another powerful part of this tool is searching by text. If you have keywords you're looking for, such as interface or a control station, you can type that in and search on that as well. And then finally, we encourage you to sign up for the ASRS newsletters. We have a monthly newsletter callback that includes reports from all types of reporters. Now we also offer a UAS-focused email, UAS Safety and Site, which highlights recent UAS reports received at ASRS and topics of interest. You can scan the QR code and sign up for it, and you can subscribe to call back on our website. The ASRS website has a dedicated UAS landing page with FAQs and a link to the 50 most recent UAS reports that are available in the ASRS online database. you can scan that QR code to go directly to the page. Well, thank you very much for this opportunity to present information about ASRS and opportunity to answer questions. And remember, when in doubt, fill it out and contribute to aviation safety. Thanks.

[51:05] Kevin Sofen: Another mic drop moment. Mary, well said. I loved learning and hearing about that and loved the whole keeping it simple, who, what, when, where, why. And when I was hearing you talk is, well, what's the incentive of, Why would I fill this out? Well, it's this whole concept of why we're here. It's, it's unity. It's bringing us all together because the more we filled out, the better data create, the better we can start tracking trends to be able to use this to make better decisions that I like kind of seeing how it's a platform that's kind of for the people as it looked at this, how you can kind of search and to do trends yourself. So is that true, Mary, that kind of anyone could go in there and look at the data?

[51:40] Mary Keller: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's literally as simple as just going to the ASRS website and searching online. So it really, I mean, we have in addition to UAS reports, of course, we have fixed wing reports, crude, rotorcraft, so really the whole range by many different reporter groups. So it's really a fascinating collection of information and extremely rich. Obviously, one of the big components of ASRS is the human factors perspective. And so the reports often are very rich with, you know, reporter insights and, you know, lessons learned as we keep saying, because it really is one of the most valuable parts of it. And that's found in the report narrative, in addition to all the great fixed field information, which you can sort and excel in any other formats quite easily.

[52:22] Kevin Sofen: So I'll leave this open to everyone else. Questions for Mary from everyone else in the audience. This is sort of maybe rapid fire, putting Mary on the hot seat, not that way, but Mary's here. So let's kind of use this time to kind of ask Mary and then ask us some questions. We go Dave, Fred, Charles, Dave.

[52:40] Dave Danielson: Yeah, so thank you, Mary. That was awesome. I'm now sporting my NASA hat to respect the effort right there. I've got a bunch of hats though. My question is, so data sharing, obviously, it's only as good as data in, data out. So what type of intersects are there or is there any future discussion on NASA engaging with other data collection groups or specific to international, like the EASA to be able to pipe in additional data, because certainly a drone pilot like a crewed aircraft pilot, they're the same world round and it seems like there's a lot of data out there, they just need to know where to go. Can you speak to that?

[53:27] Mary Keller: First, I guess to set the premise here that it's a voluntary safety reporting system right now at the ASRS. Anybody can submit a report and we do get reports on the fixed wing side from know, international pilots sometimes, too. You can certainly do that. But at this point, in terms of actually actively collaborating, I know we participate in a variety of industry meetings. Dr. Becky Hui, of course, is the director of ASRS does that. And she would be having discussions along those lines. And that's really the extended knowledge I have of it.

[54:01] Kevin Sofen: We have Charles, Dave Krauss, Fred Carlson.

[54:04] Charles Werner: Yeah, so is it possible for us to establish or design some reports that are canned reports that we could use on a regular basis to provide information? And I just wanted to show you that in that short time, I also, I can't see this, but I signed up for the newsletter, so.

[54:19] Mary Keller: Okay. So, Charles, just to make sure I understand your question, you're asking is there a way to produce some kind of canned report format? Was that correct?

[54:27] Charles Werner: Yes, that's correct.

[54:28] Mary Keller: Okay. Well, ASRS is, you know, we have these, what do you want to say, canned report formats, available. And so what someone who wants to report pulls that up, they can select which fields of information they want to provide. It's really in that way customizable to the, you know, the time the reporter has available to spend, you know, filling out the report form and also what they're willing to share. So that the level of information, the extent of information, it is voluntary. So it's kind of self-customizing in that sense.

[55:00] Kevin Sofen: Fred and Dave Krauss.

[55:02] Fred Carlson: Quick question for me. Is there a statute of limitations? Essentially, we had a near miss with a press helicopter. We were given 300 feet above ground level for our COLA, and they told the helicopter you get 500 feet MSL, but we were on a hilltop, and it got a little close for comfort. Is there any way to go back and report on something that happened over a year ago or two years ago? Is there any limitation on how far back your reporting can go?

[55:28] Mary Keller: Well, the advisory circular says that reporters should submit the report either within the 10 days of the event or when they first become aware of it. And so, you know, put that in. And so, ultimately, ASRS does not have the decision about how far back is allowed. That's really something that the FAA would determine, and so I can't make any statement one way or the other about that, but I would always recommend, we always recommend submitting a report so you can certainly contribute information just in general to the overall safety data available in the ASRS.

[56:01] Kevin Sofen: Dave Krauss?

[56:02] Dave Krauss: Hi, Mary. That was a great presentation and like Charles, I actually did sign up for the newsletter myself. And looking at it, I like that you showed, for example, that 150 meter difference and the comment that person was self-reporting because they didn't realize that they were in metrics versus imperial, because that's something that a lot of us sometimes frequently the encounter, there was one question that I had from the presentation that just didn't make sense to me. I was wondering if you could clarify. You had made a comment about, you also invite people submitting that if they encounter a wire near a launch location. Can you clarify what you meant by that request? It's not just a blanket, hey, I'm flying today and there's a wire in the area. It's more so I made a mistake because I didn't realize there was a wire in my flight airspace, that was how I took it. What was your intention with that?

[56:55] Mary Keller: The intention was that you could either report an event, let's say you launched and you notice there is a wire nearby and that caused you to have to alter your flight path, your trajectory, or perhaps you went to the launch location and before anything happened during your pre-flight, you noticed and made note of the hazard of the wires nearby. So, you know, really, ASRS is looking for what we call precursors to accidents. So the earlier on, the sooner. So if you have a specific location that you think has these hazards of wires or tall trees or whatever they are, it doesn't have to involve an actual event. It can just be a, you know, Hey, we saw this hazard and we're worried. We were worried about it. We're just sharing the information.

[57:36] Kevin Sofen: So before we transition to our second kind of final part of this AAR kind of rapid fire round table, did anybody else want to prompt a question for Mary before we make that transition? Kyle?

[57:49] Kyle Williams: I just want to clarify, the reporting backyard, I mean the data goes in, that's spectacular, but other than our organizations getting in and manually sort of keeping track of it and watching those reports, the reports go into the FAA for sure. What are we picturing or is there a workflow for being able to make sure that these trends are getting pushed out to us so that we can be pushing them through our organizations to actually help people? Is there any sort of an automated process to be doing that? Maybe I've missed it somewhere through here, but it seems like that's the hard part about the amount of data that you guys are all able to collect and how we regurgitate that back out so that it's palatable and something that folks can learn from. Right.

[58:27] Mary Keller: So there is no automated process in place. There really it involves either as someone searching on their own for the data they want, and then getting the lessons learned, the data out of it. However, if an individual organization wants some assistance with doing a search, say it's a little more of a complex or sophisticated search, we can help with that. So certainly we're happy if you reach out to us and we can, you know, chat about what kind of, you know, search parameters you want, what criteria, we can help you with that or even do the search ourselves. And then you would have the reports and you could manipulate them and do what you needed to with the data in them.

[59:06] Kevin Sofen: Charles?

[59:07] Charles Werner: I did like that in the, sorry, in the reporting page you can select just public safety and UAV. And so there is an easy way to boil down exactly what we're looking at, so.

[59:16] Mary Keller: Yes. Yeah.

[59:18] Charles Werner: And I think that's what got back to my question of, is it possible that NASA might work with public safety to help develop some of these reports that we're going to look at on a regular basis so that we look at it monthly? Because if we don't have some type of production, I think that's what Kyle's getting at, is that if we don't have production that we're seeing it just becomes unuseful.

[59:37] Mary Keller: Yes. Oh, I feel that there is opportunity for that, and I think we'll be happy to have more discussion about that, what we can do to be talking about routinely, be able to provide information or assist with having sort of a regular flow of what we've seen, you know, the most recent reports and that sort of thing. So absolutely, yes, we would like to have that collaboration and partnership.

[60:00] Kevin Sofen: Hey, snaps for real-time partnership collaboration ideas on the fly, doing it for you, whomever you are listening, that we're working here for the public, for first responders. This is why we do what we do. So I want to now kind of transition into our final third leg here of this wonderful event that we're hosting today, sort of this AAR format chainsaw, where Pritchard had mentioned this idea of a chainsaw, sort of, hey, the end of the day, you're tired, you're hungry, you want to go home, and if you're still listening, thank you for listening, but particularly, you've probably got somewhere else to be and you're still listening, so thank you. But we want to keep this kind of, finish off with some rapid fire, some good mic drops from everyone here. And what I'm gonna ask everyone is sort of 30 seconds sort of thoughts. I've got about six questions, but I'm gonna probably boil it down to four here as I'm looking at them. But I want to go around the horn, and again, I feel like if you do want to add on to someone else's previous thoughts, that's totally fine. but continue to keep these responses 30 to 45 seconds max. But so a couple of questions, and I think one that I wanna start us off with is sort of what are the benefits, perceptions, and concerns related to reporting and data sharing? And I'll repeat that one more time. What are the benefits, perceptions, I know that's hard to answer in 45 seconds or less, so maybe just choose a part of it. But so I'll kind of look around the horn here, but I see Greg R., Dave Krauss, and Jason Burnside. I'll throw it to you three first, and then we'll go next three.

[61:36] Greg R. (Pilot Institute): I don't know personally that I have any concerns about the data sharing. I think it's all a benefit like we've seen throughout the discussion here with everyone. I think it's important that we all get access to that data and that we take it to even the regulators. I think somebody mentioned that before as well. So I don't see any concerns quite frankly. Like Mary said, it's all anonymized, which I think is very important. It needs to be mentioned that this has been around for a very long time in aviation. Drones getting added to this list is only a recent thing, but this program has been successful for many years, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be successful in the UAS world.

[62:14] Dave Krauss: I would agree with Greg on his perspective. I don't have any data concerns either. The fact that NASA is a third party in this, and they're anonymizing that information, that's a perfect reason why we should be working as a community to transfer knowledge. Just by definition alone, the knowledge transfer is the sharing of information, skills, and experience. We're doing that and try to grow our community, and we're helping NASA and other groups to define benchmarks for regulators, training, equipment readiness, and its accountability. So, you know, it is drone safety day, fly safe, fly right, work with NASA, and you know, we have no concerns about the integrity of the data. Put it in.

[63:03] Kevin Sofen: Jason Burnside and Dave Danielson, if you want to touch on the benefits and perceptions too, we welcome that. Jason?

[63:10] Jason Burnside: Yeah, hard to follow up. You guys are awesome. You know, I would say that the benefits are that you are contributing to the solution, not to the problem by being willing and open to and honest with, you know, opportunities for improvement, near misses, whatever, there's going to be somebody out there who's going to benefit from that information. Someone out there maybe has also been in your shoes and had a very similar circumstance, and maybe reading that will empower them to give or give them the confidence to also contribute. You know, just, again, no concerns, I'm with these guys. I think the perception we need to make sure that the UAS culture goes the same route that a crewed aviation has for a century. We're a part of that flying in the national airspace, and we need to be a part of that in this information sharing and reporting.

[64:02] Kevin Sofen: Dave Danielson, then Charles Werner.

[64:04] Dave Danielson: Absolutely everything that was just said. At the end of the day, when I take control of my aircraft, I am responsible. and to be able to share the data, the lessons learned, benefits not only myself, but the community as a whole. So when first training my pilots, the very first lesson on human factor issue is to say, hey, own it. You are putting a disruptive technology into the national airspace, therefore you are the hazard. Own that fact and be able to risk mitigate from that point. Once you have done, successfully completed that mission, memorialize that in a way that others can learn from your experience, because that, again, I'm redundant, but it's that mindset that is going to further the technology, further the pilot behavior, develop the partnerships that we have with all industry partners, whether it's NASA, the manufacturers, the end users, and the leadership saying this is a great asset to serve our communities.

[65:16] Kevin Sofen: Charles Werner.

[65:17] Charles Werner: You hit the benefits already. I think it's a perception thing. The perception is that we want the perception of being an aviation culture. At our conference recently of over 600 people are drone responders. We had John Meehan with the FAA asked the question across the board, how many of you have aviation programs? About 10 people out of 600 raised their hands. He stepped back and he said, now let me just say this, when you leave here, the 590 rest of you need to start aviation programs and get that mindset of an aviation culture.

[65:48] Greg R. (Pilot Institute): Great, I just want to say one more thing real quick. When the ASRS program, and I think Mary can talk about this, pilots were very reluctant to share data for a very long time. So I think we should expect maybe the same kind of reaction initially, but please share with folks that this has been around a long time and that pilots were also reluctant initially to do this and we shouldn't be, we should just move on everybody else did.

[66:10] Kevin Sofen: Fred?

[66:11] Fred Carlson: Yeah, I want to chime in on that. As an administrator of this, it's something that I want to build into the training of my new pilots coming in that this reporting is available. It's also going to be on me to get that training ingrained into my pilots that have been doing this for a while and didn't know this existed. So it really is like Dave Danielson said, I need them to own it. Whether it was good, it was bad, or otherwise, just report, because that data sharing amongst all of us does nothing but help all this forward.

[66:38] Kevin Sofen: Mary.

[66:38] Mary Keller: Yes, I just do want to say that the more that safety reporting can be encouraged throughout the UAS community, the better. Absolutely the parallel that, you know, ASRS has been around for now over 48 years and it's well established in the fixed and recurring communities. It's going to take a while to build that in the UAS communities and certainly anything that we can do to help support that and help you establish your safety reporting cultures. we like to be, you know, collaborating with you on that. But I think letting people know that their information they send is extremely valuable and all reports are confidential. I know I read every single UAS report that comes in the door at ASRS and in many other reports, and we go to great pains taking to make sure things are properly de-identified. There's multiple layers that we go through. A matter of fact, I just finished reading about 700 reports over the last couple of days to make sure nothing was getting through before it goes into the public database. So I'm very involved with that, very invested in, it's extremely important, and it's probably just one of the most important things we do at ASRS is to protect reporter and their third-party identities.

[67:48] Kevin Sofen: Who does to you, Mary? Thank you for doing that. So I want to keep going around the horn quickly. I want to hear from next, Jeff Pritchard and Pete York, and then I want to hear from Justin Jager and then Kyle, then we're going to switch up the questions. So Jeff and Pete, if you wanna touch on stuff you haven't heard yet around benefits, perceptions, concerns of all this.

[68:06] Jeff Pritchard: Yeah, there's not much more to add here. I think this is a pretty powerful group here to the point of unity and just self-reporting super important. And again, it's gonna take a bit probably for people to get this to become part of their culture, but there's a lot of value add for all of us. And so I just encourage people to, you know, own it.

[68:24] Kevin Sofen: Great way to put it.

[68:26] Pete York: Yeah, and I echo that really nothing to add. It all comes down to culture and it's gonna take us to help change that culture.

[68:33] Kevin Sofen: Kyle or Justin Jager, do you wanna add anything onto that?

[68:37] Kyle Williams: Yeah, I think the concern should be mitigated since we've hammered on the head how anonymized and that this will look better for you to show that you've done this report if you had an incident that winds up getting investigated in some way. And as Charles said earlier, we're one major incident away from having a really hard look at what we're doing here. And by reporting, you help us build the database that helps us see the trends so that we as organizations can improve our training, improve our standards and best practices, so that we can make this culture better, so that we can make sure that we reduce the risk of having any major problems. And so there just shouldn't be any concerns at this point and the benefits are absolutely clear. I don't think it's gonna be hard to get that message across. We've seen it very positively at our Alita events and their Alita processes. So I'm excited to be able to add this as a component that we can, that we can all push forward throughout the year. And we'll certainly be talking about it in Boston next month at our, at our first large conference of the year.

[69:38] Kevin Sofen: Justin.

[69:39] Justin Jager: Yeah, I don't have much to add to say, you know, on the federal side, we have a very similar system, the safe comm system, and I can just say it's invaluable. The data that we get through that, the trend tracking all for all the reasons that everyone's already given out here. So really supportive of this for everyone else and looking forward to see what kind of data and things we get from it too.

[70:00] Kevin Sofen: Quick thing, Safecom, you mentioned it, I guess 30, maybe 50 seconds, what is it and how does it tie into this whole conversation?

[70:06] Justin Jager: Yeah, you know, it's exactly the same as ASRS. It's a non-putative self-reporting system. We've been using it on the federal side for a very long time for everything, not just drones, but helicopters, fixed-wing operations, anything in the national airspace, basically. And again, you know, anyone go in and query our stuff too, and I'm looking forward to how we can kind of collaborate our efforts between these two systems. Someone brought that up of how do we look at different folks, different entities are tracking all these things too. So how can we look at them globally, bring them together for a clearer picture? I'm just really excited that we'll be doing this on the non-federal side now too. That's just fantastic.

[70:45] Kevin Sofen: Love it. Charles, I'll throw it to you really quick before we transition.

[70:48] Charles Werner: Yeah, this is just a takeaway. I'd just like to say that I think what's important from this is that we come out with a unified message from all of our organizations that say, we all stand behind this process and make recommendations in all the conferences, in all the literature, the newsletters, whatever, that we send out a solid message that this is something we all stand behind.

[71:06] Kevin Sofen: Well, it's like Charles. So the next question, almost two-part again, and then I'm going to throw it to you, Pritchard and Pete first. But knowing what you know now, how would you integrate ASRS into your operations? Jeff and Pete first.

[71:21] Pete York: Well, I think one of the key things here is, to Justin's point, is there's a safe comm system for our federal agencies, and our partners. But the reason I'm getting behind really pushing ASRS more holistically is the fact that it's available to everyone. Whereas with the SAFECOM system, you do need an aviation safety officer that does all the redaction and makes it anonymous for the most part before it's reported out. So we have Mary for that and her whole team. And so we are missing so many opportunities for people to report their experiences that we can all learn from by not having or not utilizing, I should say, this established system that's been around and just leveraging it more than what we have from the UAS side of the house. And so there's a lot of value add there, like I've said, and so not all of us have access to the safe comm because we don't have the levers there. But this ASRS system is available to all of us. And I think just having the ability to report out more to a centralized system is only going to help all of us, like I said before. And so to Justin's point, I think there's ways down the road that we can, you know, collaborate the European stuff as well as safe comm and ASRS and have a more of a holistic report out. But at this point, you know, it's somewhat fragmented, but I think there's at least an avenue for those folks that don't have abilities to those other two reporting systems to jump in here, and we'll all benefit from that.

[72:34] Jeff Pritchard: Yeah, I mean, not too much to add after what's already been said, other than to say it's going to be paramount for our organization to continue pushing the reporting culture and the importance of that reporting moving forward. We've already implemented it in our organization. But I think, you know, one of the takeaways from today is also having our visual observers submit their own report. Now, that's not something that we had considered before or knew that it was really a factor. So I guess that's one takeaway that we're going to be implementing that we haven't so far.

[73:06] Kevin Sofen: Looking at some of the other active first responders here, Fred, Jason, thoughts on that, on what are the different ways of how you can integrate ASRS into operations?

[73:17] Fred Carlson: For me, it's like I said before, it's something that I had to integrate into my own training. running a course for some prospective pilots in a couple weeks, and this is going to become a PowerPoint in that presentation of how do we operate, how do we build into that safety culture within the manned aviation into the drone world, and it's going to fall down on getting it to become a habit. Jeff just said having the BO fill out a report, I would have never even thought about that. So just to have that data points that you can collect on multiple levels and be able to compile it and the anonymity is, it makes it easier with buy-in from the pilots that it's not necessarily personally them. I mean, they had to own what happened, but if they report it, you know, at least you're paying it forward and hopefully somebody else doesn't make the same mistake.

[74:01] Kevin Sofen: Jason.

[74:02] Jason Burnside: Yeah, to Fred's point, you know, starting your new pilots off, you know, from day one, you know, we emphasize safety and this is a part of that discussion. You know, I think another thing that if you have a program and this is not already part of your policy and procedure, along with if you have an incident or an accident. I know internally we have report writing that we have to do. If this is one more piece of the puzzle that we do, that's the checkbox of I went through this policy, did this, and all that. One of the things we do with our team is we end up creating an app that lives on everyone's phone. And after flights, they go through and create a post-flight report. And so that post-flight report goes to me. And one of those questions that they have to tick off is do you need to file an ASRS? And then there's a link that takes a right to it. So part of not only create, making this a part of your culture, making this a part of your policy and procedure, but make it accessible to your pilots. So it's something that they didn't hear through their pilot training. And then a year later when they need it, they can't remember how to access it or things along those lines.

[75:08] Kevin Sofen: Dave Krauss, then Kyle and Coitt. You've been a little quiet there. So Dave, Kyle, Coitt.

[75:13] Dave Krauss: So I love what was just said about adding something into the end of a report and for everybody in the drone community as a whole, you can add it to the end of your post-flight checklist. That checklist is good for, you know, ensuring consistency and completeness, and it will help with risk mitigation as a whole. But more importantly, it's going to get you into the habit of figuring out if it was something that needed to be reported to ASRS, and we can all develop that safety culture and go in that right direction using a checklist.

[75:44] Kyle Williams: I've been sitting here thinking about how I can utilize this information, especially as we as we do work towards some processes on actually pulling the data out and being able to share it more publicly. And I'm picturing probably incorporating part of my monthly team training will be me or me assigning one of my pilots to do a scan through and actually having a 10 or 15 minute talk through what reports were filed in that last period and being able to see what we can lean out of that and hopefully there's too many reports in there at some point to make it like a line by line but that each month we're incorporating this as a team in order to be able to learn in the moment what people are seeing be able to make sure that we're pivoting and reacting more quickly.

[76:29] Kevin Sofen: Coitt.

[76:30] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, so I would, I can hear, I would challenge both our leadership to make a stand on this and saying, yeah, this is important. And then we want to see this is going to be part of our policy and procedure, making it accessible, as Jason had just said. I also think in the industry, I think there's a, almost a responsibility here to be able to help make this easier and accessible for those of us that are operating. So going out to our industry partners and saying, listen, if we want to continue making this safer, if we want to continue making this more accessible and we want to do this better the safer way, then let's all get behind this and do this as a community. Not just those responding, but those providing the equipment, providing the software, providing the tools that are putting us up in the air as well. So this has got to be a community response.

[77:23] Kevin Sofen: Charles.

[77:24] Charles Werner: I just wanted to say to make this really worthwhile, we have to be really a concerted effort on doing the reporting back to everybody as to what's happening, what we're learning, so that they understand the value of putting those entries into the system.

[77:38] Kevin Sofen: Does anybody else want to answer this question before we go to the next one? I'm kind of popcorning around, but if you have something, raise your hand or just kind of go. If not, I'm going to transition to the next question. We're covering this great. So everyone, thank you. So one more kind of AAR before we go to closing is talk about an incident that you should have submitted but didn't. Fred, you talked about an incident earlier, but kind of for everyone who's listening to this and thinking, oh, you know what, maybe I should have. And Mary, I'd actually be interested in hearing you talk about, is there such a thing as bad data here? We're asking people to submit more, but where is that line in terms of what you should submit or what you shouldn't submit? I would love to kind of context on what's something that you think you should have submitted and maybe also Mary, if you want to take that first kind of, you know, where do we draw this line on what to submit and what not to submit?

[78:29] Mary Keller: Sure. So, there are no lines drawn. The only lines drawn on what to submit or not are really contained in the advisory circular 004-6F. So, there are some reports that are excluded under that scope, you know, criminal actions, intentional actions, you know, that are a violation of federal law or other laws. So those things are included accidents also because accidents are under the jurisdiction of NTSB. So you know things that come in now you know again a person can have an accident qualifying and as an accident down the line but they don't know it at the time. So if we do receive a report that is initially not found to be an accident we'll make sure though eventually it does it's not processed right so it doesn't it doesn't get processed into the database but otherwise all reports are welcome. So the more information, the better, there's no need to cull it out. Don't hold it back.

[79:23] Kevin Sofen: All right. Kind of again, knowing we are talking about the incident that you should have submitted but didn't. Dave Danielson, Greg R., Justin, kind of just throwing it out there. Dave, kind of even from your past career in LA, what are some things that you think you should have submitted but didn't?

[79:40] Dave Danielson: Honestly, there's too many examples in this space. Because as we first started with our equipment, again, we didn't know what we didn't know. And so as the drones started evolving, Dave Krauss brought it up regarding the firmware updates. You know, it was funny because early on in industry, you'd get a firmware update and it would say, fix some bugs. But what was that? And what process, what standard did you apply to shake that equipment out that it is still good to go? So I honestly, I can tell you that anybody who says that they have not had an accident with a drone telling the full story, because we just had not evolved culturally yet. So, you know, I guess my message on this is, you know, now that we know that there are these tools out here, I'll go back to the redundancy, own it, and be open, be transparent, share that data, because somebody else may learn from that and not cross that line. And as Mary had brought up, we may not have known that qualified as an accident that truly needs to be investigated. We're contributing to the overall national airspace culture, and that's exactly what we need to do.

[81:04] Greg R. (Pilot Institute): Great. I have a perfect example of one that I should have submitted, but actually didn't because I forgot, but now you reminded me. We lost an aircraft because we do a lot of testing of drones, including showing all the different settings inside of the menu. And one of them, as you know, with DJI drones, you can bring the sticks on the inside and it shuts down the motors. There's two different ways that can happen. It can happen in flight in an emergency only, meaning that if the drone flips over, the propellers stop and then the drone is gonna fall, but the props are stopped. And then you can also do it manually. So if you go and do that function that you do for taking off and or starting the motors, you do that in flight, it will shut down the motors, which is not a function that you wanna have on. But throughout our testing of one of the drone, we left it on and I didn't know that. And I was in the middle of flying a mission and it brought me into doing one of these commands where I brought the sticks exactly in that position, not because I wanted to shut down the motors, because I wanted to film in a certain location and all the motors stop all of a sudden, it became very quiet and the drone fell from the sky and exploded, not exploded, but broke on the ground. So this is something that I should have reported because of, to me, it's a UN factor thing, or it's something that maybe can save somebody a crash in the future, check those settings before you take off. So guess what we do now before each flight, I make sure that those settings are set up correctly. That's, I think, a good example of a report.

[82:27] Kevin Sofen: Justin Jager and Kyle.

[82:29] Justin Jager: Yeah, you know, we've been pretty lucky to have the SafeCom system this whole time. So I can't say that we have any that we haven't reported. I always encourage people, report more. And if it's not relevant or we don't need it, that's fine. But again, just the more reporting, the better, so.

[82:44] Kyle Williams: Yeah, I would go back to the icing. we actually lost a small aircraft due to ice. And it actually was because of sharing and reporting within the leaded community that we actually identified what the problem was. I wouldn't have known it was icing without having other officers from around the country sharing some similar experiences. I don't know if there were any other crashes, but some similar errors and behaviors and whatnot. We certainly could have shared that one and would have definitely helped push that message out further. And so going forward in the future, that would be an example where we definitely would be throwing that up or work with us.

[83:16] Kevin Sofen: Cool, continue rapid fire here. Fred, Jason, and Charles.

[83:20] Fred Carlson: So we've had the icing, the down and in problem, we saw it training upstate New York. Let's see, I had the helicopter issue, but a random one that I had recently, we had a large commercial fire, and the smoke shifted, the drone got caught in it, and it was losing lift. It wasn't crashing, it was just not acting right, and when we landed, we realized that soot was building up on the props. There was particles of tar that were adhering themselves to the props, and that's the type of thing that, you know, I never would have thought of and it's just something that would be good to report and say hey to other municipalities that are flying at fires that if you get caught in smoke, you might want to check your props afterwards because you might have built up some debris on there that would cause you to lose lift. So just little things like that I would love to share and to have this way to get it out would be very helpful.

[84:03] Kevin Sofen: Jason?

[84:04] Jason Burnside: Yeah, several years ago we were flying in operation with an older aircraft and we were bringing the aircraft back for landing and out of nowhere, we don't know if it was a bird strike, a failed motor, the drone just fell out of the sky like a rock. And thankfully, it was over an unpopulated area that landed in a field. We went over and picked up the debris and things like that, but filing something like that about the unexplained nature of that failure, we went back and took a look at all the metadata and tried to analyze if we observed anything out of the ordinary, couldn't identify But that would have been something we absolutely, you know, have benefited from or should have reported.

[84:44] Kevin Sofen: Charles.

[84:45] Charles Werner: Yeah. Back when one of the departments I was working with, we were trying to do one of these dramatic films. We're always trying to do dramatic stuff, right? And wanted to make the drone come at you, taking picture and not realizing perception of you're not doing that too often, so you don't understand how fast the drone's moving. And before we knew it was right up on top of us, and we almost had some people hurt. and that's because we just hadn't done that kind of flight to understand the maneuvering.

[85:10] Kevin Sofen: Pete and Pritchard.

[85:13] Pete York: Yeah, I think we're in the same boat. We had some icing events and we learned a lot from that. We've actually done a lot of studies and put out a safe comm regarding it because we weren't completely aware of the ASRS system at the time, but something I would definitely I think helped a lot of other people on this call that we've actually talked about it.

[85:28] Jeff Pritchard: Yeah, same thing. And, you know, like Greg was talking about, we were testing an aircraft and had sort of a similar situation where there was a stick configuration that closed out the aircraft and it started to fall from the sky. Thankfully, sharing the experience with the vendor, it ended up helping them rewrite their manual because they didn't identify them. But still something I should have reported, but at the time, didn't think about submitting to ASRS.

[85:56] Kevin Sofen: So we're kind of, this is like a freight train that's been running and I think for the most part, we realized that this could go on for hours. We're already over time, so I guess shame on me as the moderator, but we've kind of gone around the horn, we followed the format, and I think it's kind of time to close it out here, unfortunately, or fortunately, if we put you to sleep by now, hopefully not. But this is, if anything, just the start of something great. I mean, the start of just continuing this unity, culture of safety, driving public safety aviation forward. So I wanna leave this kind of now to final comments from everyone of a what next from your perspective. What are some ways that you can help the people listening? Any resources to suggest? We'll include them all in the show notes, wherever they're posted. So everyone, if you got 30 to 60 seconds, everyone kind of final close out, again, of just what do you wanna see people take from this? What are some resources to check out? How can people get ahold of you? So we've got a few here. So I think I see Jeff with your hand up or is that, yeah, we'll throw it to you.

[87:00] Jeff Pritchard: Okay, so real quick, a wise person once told me one of the great things about UAS is these little machines, they bring us all together. And one of the things that's so important about this particular venue is that there are so many different use cases from the different public safety sections. And having everybody come together to talk in a forum like this sends a very powerful message, similar to what Drone Responders is doing and similar to what other groups do when they have their subcommittee groups. So I'm really happy and proud to be a part of all the people on this call and looking forward to seeing what's gonna happen in the future with more calls like this.

[87:43] Pete York: And I'll just add, be a student of your craft and I appreciate being a part of this movement.

[87:48] Kevin Sofen: Well said. All right, so continue around the corner. If you wanna go or I long told you, I'm looking at, let's say I'm looking at you, Greg R., then Justin Jager and Dave Krauss.

[87:59] Greg R. (Pilot Institute): I'm gonna say if you're a single operator or you have only a few pilots, save the link to the SRS as a bookmark. It should be something that you go and submit anytime you have an issue. If you have SOPs, it definitely needs to be part of your standard operating procedures. This is something that anytime an incident or an accident happens, it needs to be reported as well. I think it's really that simple to get people on board. And of course, share this with other people in the industry that need to hear about it on the public safety side of things or on the commercial side of things. I know here we're specifically for public safety, but this applies to anyone flying a drone.

[88:34] Kevin Sofen: Justin.

[88:36] Justin Jager: Yeah, I would just say promote it within your organizations, your entities, whatever that looks like. And if you are a UAS program manager, just an aviation manager, that the second part of this also is going into that system and drawing out some of those four lessons learned that you can share and brief with your folks. So don't forget that important second part to promote people putting it in, but also get in there and use the system. So.

[88:58] Kevin Sofen: Dave Krauss.

[89:00] Dave Krauss: So we're all actually sitting here on Drone Safety Day and let's kind of take a moment to realize that the mission of the FAA Safety Team is to lower the nation's accident rate by conveying safety principles and practices through training, outreach, and education. That's exactly what we're doing here and sharing the data and the information together as a community is going to help us just improve tenfold.

[89:24] Kevin Sofen: Dave Danielson, then Charles Werner.

[89:27] Dave Danielson: Yeah. So I'd be remiss again not to quote from experience. In the Navy, I had a master chief that brought me aside as a young airman and said, welcome aboard, you need to start looking at yourself in a different light. It's one of those things where you think, okay, You're either going to be that buoyant extrovert, pilot, crewman, whatever position you roll in, but that attitude is going to miss something. More likely you need to be that brooding introvert. examine what you have, look at your human factors, look at your equipment factors, look at your environmental factors, and make that your lifelong charge. Be the brooding introvert to be prepared and assess what you are doing because at the end of the day you're in control. And having these resources, having a community that supports that mindset is what is going to keep our national air safe. So like Dave Krauss said, again, yes, I want to make sure that the message is here. It's Drone Safety Awareness Day, supporting the FAA mission, supporting NASA and what they are providing, supporting what we as pilots are trying to achieve within our community. And it's a bright future as long as we keep pushing forward. Thank you.

[90:49] Kevin Sofen: Charles Werner.

[90:50] Charles Werner: Yeah, I'd just like to say I think that we know this group is going to continue to work together, but it's important for us to expand the group. We need to continue to add more people to this conversation, and we need to solidify this as a formal message forward, and it's time to take this from FAA Safety Day to make every day a safety day. And the last thing I'll do is I'm going to share a Michael Leo saying is that he knows that his team is successful when his team doesn't fly. And that means that they've looked at all the risks and they've made all the decisions and they've said, nope, this isn't the right time because of the things we've learned and that's what we have the opportunity to do here.

[91:28] Kevin Sofen: Well, from that FDNY train, we'll go to Fred and Jason.

[91:32] Fred Carlson: Great quote and that is one of Michael Leo's favorite metrics for sure. For me, it's, you know, a wise person once said, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. This is a solution, so be part of it. Be a supporter of it. Put input in and you get good stuff out and really just you know adopt that safety culture. It works for manned aviation and it will work for public safety and UAS operations. It's something that we all should be a part of and I'm happy to be here.

[91:59] Jason Burnside: I would just say as anyone who is a pilot, an aviator, a member of a aviation program, you know we have a huge responsibility when we fly in the national airspace to be good stewards of aviation and do it safely and I think part of that responsibility is exactly what this whole discussion has been about, you know, sharing your lessons learned, sharing that information so that we can continue to make everyone safe in the national airspace and share everything we can.

[92:29] Kevin Sofen: Well, so Jason, I'm looking at you, Mary, next, and we'll wrap up with Coitt.

[92:34] Mary Keller: I want to thank everybody first for this tremendous opportunity to provide information about ASRS. And I want to encourage not only everybody here, But if you can push this out to organizations to encourage, as I know you will, the use of ASRS as a way to submit reports on any safety concerns and events, whatever the issue is. And I know ASRS is certainly looking forward to working collaboratively with any organization in the interest of, you know, sharing out ASRS safety data. That's our mission is to share the lessons learned. So if you're interested in some further conversation, feel free to reach out at the email on the slides or also just go directly to the website and we can initiate that discussion.

[93:19] Kevin Sofen: To our fearless leader and spark plug and one of our, all of our best friends, Coitt Kessler.

[93:25] Coitt Kessler: Hey guys, so this is about team, period. Team. If we're gonna play like a team, we gotta practice like a team. we gotta operate like a team. This is about our public safety team doing this the right way. And this is about us all being on the same field, running the same place, and we've got to be doing this as a unit. If we're going to call ourselves a public safety team, we have to act like one, which means we all have to be working together. We've got some amazing people on here, great resources to go to get this information back out. I absolutely love listening to drone responders and the information we're getting pushed out to our community. Greg with Pilot Institute, just all the work that you're beating us every week with your vlogs. Dave Krauss, man, you're on the safety team. You're just constantly getting information back out to us. I just think this team is super powerful, and we need more people on it, and we've got to act like we've got to act the way we play. That's as a unit. Thanks.

[94:23] Kevin Sofen: Snaps for all around. I want to say I'm grateful and humbled to be here. I'm a student in the I've only got like five pages of notes and excited to see where this is gonna go. And ultimately my biggest takeaway recommendation for all of you is reach out to every single person that you've listened to today. They are all willing to help. They will all respond, whether it's on LinkedIn, email, phone. I had the fortune of being with a lot of these individuals at the Texas Robotics Summit. And there's something about the public safety aviation community that is even a little bit more supportive and welcoming than the entire public safety community as a whole. It's really an amazing group of individuals. Everyone on the screen, thank you all for what you're doing. And I look forward to, yeah, just a little T-Swift love. Just appreciate the love and appreciation. And to Mike O'Shea's quote of, you know, what's on slide one, safety. Let's continue to prioritize that in unity amongst everyone here. Thank you all for listening. Happy Drone Safety Awareness Day. Every day is Drone Safety Day. I think Charles made a good quote there. We should put that on the shirt. So thank you all. Hope you have a great rest of your day and we look forward to connecting again soon. Take care. Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Firefighting podcast today. If you enjoyed what you heard and got any value, please drop us a rating, leave us a comment or reach out to us on social media. Have a great day and together we can advance the future of smart firefighting.