< Back to PAASS Program

2023-2024 PASS Program Summary

The 2023-2024 PAASS Program will be four hours in length and cover several topics including preventing human factor related accidents, environmental professionalism for aerial applications, and the importance of having an operational security plan in place. The program will begin with a review of agricultural aviation accidents from the 2023 season. It will also include a discussion of accident trends seen over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2022. Studying agricultural aviation accident trends allows participants to better understand the causes of accidents, information they can use to prevent similar accidents from occurring at their operations.

For the human factors segment, PAASS will take on the subjects of stall spin accidents and overly aggressive flying. Participants will hear from a variety of sources, some with advice on how to safely turn an aircraft and others with a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when an ag pilot turns too aggressively. Fran de Kock of Battlefords Airspray in Canada provides both classroom and cockpit instruction on how to turn an agricultural aircraft safely, training to learn how an aircraft feels as it approaches a stall, and why agricultural aviation is not aerobatics. Segments from an updated version of the Turn Smart video will display the four left-turning tendencies that impact a fixed-wing aircraft in a turn and how they can lead to a stall in an unsafe turn. A survivor of a stall spin accident will provide a glimpse of how severe the consequences can be when an aircraft is turned aggressively. For those pilots who feel they must fly fast and turn hard in order to get their work accomplished, one pilot explains how he learned that slowing down can speed you up. The subject of how to safely turn a helicopter will also be covered.

PAASS will go back to the basics in environmental professionalism – discussing the importance of droplet size and boom length. Using larger spray droplets and reducing the length of the boom are both proven techniques for reducing drift. The 2023-2024 program will use graphics based on the AGDISP spray drift model to visualize how various droplet sizes move once they are released from the aircraft and how the release point along the length of the boom further impacts their movement. The results of spray pattern testing conducted by the USDA-ARS Aerial Application Research Technology Unit will demonstrate how different droplet spectrums, based on nozzle selection, and boom length impact the effective swath width from an agricultural aircraft.

To reinforce the importance of security at ag aviation operations, the 2023-2024 PAASS program will provide details on an incident where a perpetrator attempted to steal an agricultural aircraft. By learning about this incident, operators and pilots can better assess their own security measures in order to prevent criminals from stealing or damaging equipment and contaminating fuel and agrichemicals. PAASS will also provide an update on FieldWatch, ADS-B usage in agricultural aircraft, and how technology designed to improve accuracy and safety can sometimes become a distraction. The PAASS 2023-2024 program will also include a question-and-answer session to improve aerial applicators’ knowledge.