Alaska Air Transit is fully committed to your safety. You may notice feeling comfortable with your pilot’s professional demeanor and predictable, unexciting flying manner. Behind the scenes, we go beyond Federal Aviation Regulation requirements to ensure your safety, including additional training, investment in safety equipment, and implementation of proactive safety programs.
Since we routinely operate in instrument flight weather conditions throughout the year, the demands of our operating environments compel us to employ only well qualified pilots. Our pilots come to us with solid operational backgrounds and safety histories. Then, before we release them to fly with our customers, we provide substantial additional training and route experience, exceeding FAA requirements, in order to ensure that you will be flying only with experienced, well trained pilots.
- Alaska Air Transit is active in the Medallion Foundation. Medallion is a standards based aviation safety program, which was founded to improve the culture of aviation safety in Alaska. Medallion participation is strictly voluntary on the part of participating carriers, who have agreed to hold themselves to higher standards than what is required by federal regulations.
- The Medallion Foundation provides training which a company uses to develop and implement its safety programs. A “star” is awarded to a company after successfully passing an audit by a Medallion examiner, which demonstrates that Medallion standards have been met. The company is then audited annually in order to maintain its Medallion status.
- AAT earned its first Medallion “star” in 2006 for its CFIT prevention program, which addresses one of the greatest risks in Alaskan aviation, controlled flight into terrain.
- Alaska Air Transit is currently developing its Operational Control program, and has been employing structured risk assessment on all flights to its frequent destinations. Once an informal practice, risk assessment is now done with a systematic process involving both the pilot in command and a ground based flight follower. This helps to prevent oversights, while reducing subjectivity, adding the flight follower’s “second opinion" to evaluating flight risk factors, and ensures the involvement of flight operations management when conditions are less certain.
- In the winter of 2009/ 2010, the company passed safety audits administered by two different global gold mining companies, according to their corporate risk management policies. Alaska Air Transit now serves both companies, moving personnel and materials to remote airstrips.
- AAT aircraft are equipped with WAAS navigation and terrain alerting. This ensures our pilots have the most accurate navigation available in general aviation aircraft, as well as enhanced situational awareness of their position relative to nearby terrain.
- We have also equipped with Spidertracks satellite based flight tracking, which uses a combination of GPS position keeping and Iridium satellite messaging to ensure that our flight follower always knows the location of our aircraft. This system is a valuable complement to the new 406 MHz satellite based emergency locator transmitter (“406 ELT”) installed on our aircraft.
