Headline News:
Come to our
Air Care 2013 conference in Albuquerque, New
Mexico on April 26-27, 2013, at the beautiful Hotel Albuquerque! Stay
tuned to our Air Care 2013 Page for further information - and be sure you are on
our quarterly newsletter list.
The Air Care Alliance and AOPA
Foundation’s Air Safety Institute have released the new Public Benefit Flying
Online Course. The course, named "Public Benefit Flying: Balancing Safety
and Compassion," is a highly professional online course designed for volunteer
pilots and staff members of public benefit flying groups to become familiar with
safety and operational issues. Read about it and follow the link to it at
News
Release 10-22-12.
Taking the course will lead to a completion certificate for
Wings credit.
The 2012 National Public Benefit Flying
Awards were presented at the U.S. Capitol Building on September 13, 2012.
Visit our 2012 Awards Page for details to date.
Our National Conference Air Care 2012 was held on April 13 - 14,
hosted by Pilots
for Patients in beautiful New Orleans! View the
archived information and
complete schedule at our Air Care
2012 Page.
Air Care Alliance Presents Check to
AOPA Foundation for Online Safety Course for Volunteer Pilot Operations
at AOPA SUMMIT. See
New Release 11-12-10
EAA
AirVenture 2010: Meeting re NTSB Recommendations and Call for
Volunteers to speak about public
benefit flying. See Bulletin 7-7-10.
NTSB Issues
Three Safety Recommendations
following investigations of accidents. Volunteer Pilot Groups are asked to
provide comments. See Bulletin
6-16-10.
The Air Care Alliance Announces a new President, Charles
L. “Lindy” Kirkland
See the complete story here.
Hurricane and disaster relief aid
- Updated for the Haiti earthquake effort:
Pilots and others have asked how they could help following
the devastation caused by
earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, floods, and other major emergency situations.
We are collecting information about participation in relief efforts and best
procedures to follow. We will update this as we learn more.
Please be sure to read the information on our
Relief
Info Page which contains special guidelines for helping during
emergencies.
Much of the general aviation relief work
will be done through groups listed on our Listings Page.
However much of the
actual greatest need will be for funds to pay for relief and rebuilding efforts. Before donating to a charitable group we recommend that you evaluate its reputation and
fundraising practices. Most nonprofit groups have
listings on Guidestar http://www.guidestar.org
or other charity evaluation sites. ALSO: If you have identified a general aviation oriented relief organization worthy
of support please let us know about it.
Again: be sure to read our Relief Info Page
which contains special guidelines for helping during emergencies.
FAA AIR TOUR
RULES ANNOUNCED: Volunteer Pilot Public Benefit Flying Missions
Untouched by New Regulations. -
February, 2007.
FAA makes
changes in proposed rules as requested by the Air Care Alliance.
On February 13, 2007, the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published its final “National Air Tour
Standards” regulations. In response to comments and testimony
given in Washington by the Chairman
and the Regulations Committee Chairman of the Air Care
Alliance, the FAA withdrew a proposed amendment to FAR §61.113 that would have
created confusion and potential regulatory and insurance problems for volunteer
pilots.
FAA’s explanation of the final rule, while in other
sections still somewhat confused on various other types of charitable
operations such as local fundraising sightseeing flights,
emphatically restated its policy on volunteer patient transport flights
and other community service missions:
"Additionally, nothing in the old rules and nothing in this new rule
prohibits a private pilot from taking a sick or injured person from point to
point as long as it is not for compensation or hire. By longstanding enforcement
policy, the FAA has allowed aircraft operators who take a charitable tax
deduction to transport a sick or injured person without that operator having an
air carrier certificate. No other form of compensation may be received. "
We are very pleased with FAA’s continued support of charitable public benefit
flying.
Note: the Air Care
Alliance worked with FAA in 1993 to establish the current policy regarding
uncompensated public benefit flights. You may read the details about this on the
following page in our Regulations Section:
FAA Policy and the
Tax Deduction Issue
Prior Photos - National Public Benefit Flying
Awards
Awards were given to groups or individuals honoring them for their
achievements and contributions supporting volunteer flying. See the awards
page.
Air Care Alliance representatives speak out at FAA Hearing on National
Air Tour NPRM - Washington, D.C. May 11, 2004:
ACA Legislative & Regulations Committee Chairman Jeff Kahn and ACA
Chairman Rol Murrow joined representative of most national General Aviation
groups to protest a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued by the FAA. ACA
was concerned that new language directed at "public service" groups
could be misinterpreted to jeopardize volunteer pilot operations. In addition to
proposing alternate language regarding public benefit flying, ACA asked that the
NPRM be withdrawn and that a proper user input process be employed to find more
effective solutions for safety needs of sightseeing operations.
Our January 2003
issue features stories about how the Flight Explorer service may have saved a
life, how several volunteer pilot groups joined forces to transport a very sick
baby, and more!
Volunteer Pilots Responded to
September 11 Crisis:
A number of magazines have printed stories
about the more than two hundred relief flights and other missions flown in the hours and days
following the terrorist attacks. For example, please see AOPA Pilot's article "CAP,
Volunteer Pilots Give Mercy" in the AOPA Members Only Pilot
Briefing section
at:
http://www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot/2001/news0112.html
More Articles and Events:
General:
Air Care Conferences: At conferences like the Air Care 97 event shown
above, representatives from groups from all over the U.S. gather to share ideas,
discuss matters of common concern, and meet in goodwill and fellowship to
further their common work.
For Webmasters and Media Representatives:
We appreciate any recognition you can give the work of the many volunteers
and their organizations flying to help others! For further information and
leads for stories contact us at
mail@aircareall.org.
ACA Graphic Logos Available:
for groups wishing to provide a link to the ACA site
several logo files are available.
They may be downloaded from the following
page, along with some descriptive text which may be useful for your purposes:
Thank you for promoting the work of the
volunteer pilots and their groups!
Newsletter and Announcement List:
INSTRUCTIONS TO JOIN OR TO BE REMOVED FROM THE ACA DISTRIBUTION LIST:
Addresses on the Air Care Alliance announcement list were collected from
several
sources, including from visitors to our website who joined
the list, our
prior printed newsletter mailing list, our contact list of
principal contacts for the various pilot groups we list, and lists of prior conference attendees.
We do not sell our list or make it
available to others for non ACA business.
Follow these instructions to join our list or to have your address removed.
Join our announcement and
Constant Contact newsletter list by
clicking here:
It is also a good idea to add aircareall.org and aircarealliance.org to your
email system's white list so messages are not blocked.
Remove your address: if you are currently on
one of our lists and wish to be removed please
remove yourself by doing the following two things:
1) Send a request to
mail@aircareall.org asking us to remove
your email address from our direct email bulletin list, AND:
2) If the message you received was from our
Constant Contact system please unsubscribe by using the link at the bottom of
that message.
IMPORTANT: We will NOT remove a name based on
a message asking us to remove an
address if the request is sent from a different and nonverifiable E-mail address. This is to prevent other persons from removing
your name from our list without your own authorization.
And thank you for your interest in flying to help others!
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