Basic Survival Training
The FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) offers a 1-day post-crash survival course for general aviation flight personnel. It is designed to be an introduction which provides basic knowledge and skills for coping with various, common survival scenarios. Furthermore, this course teaches students how to easily assemble and use a personal survival kit.
The course examines survival in desert, arctic, and water environments from two points; preflight preparation and the skills needed to endure those extremes. Included in this course is discussion on the psychology of survival, aircraft egress procedures, search and rescue operations, signaling devices and their use, fire starting/building, personal survival kits, rafts and accessories, and helicopter pickup devices.
Hands-on practice sessions are conducted, based on device/personnel availability, and may include: a fire starting lab, signaling lab, thermal (cold) chamber, ditching tank, underwater egress trainer, and an aircraft emergency evacuation (smoke) simulator. The principles and techniques taught in this course apply to the survival equipment that can be found or carried onboard most GA aircraft.
Course Content
Basic Survival training consists of information on the following topics with hands-on, Lab, application where indicated (listed in order of presentation):
- Psychology of Survival
- Overview of Search & Rescue Operations
- Personal Survival Kits
- Fire Starting with Lab
- Hot Land Survival
- Cold Land Survival
- Signaling with Lab (weather permitting)
- Aircraft (Smoke) Evacuation with Lab
- Ditching and Sea Survival
- Underwater Egress
- Water Survival Lab consisting of:
- Ditching and Egress
- Flotation and Swimming
- Raft Boarding and Righting
- Rescue (pick-up) Devices
- Shallow Water Egress Trainer (Voluntary)
- One hour is allotted for lunch at approximately noon. Food is available at nearby eating establishments or can be acquired at the Aeronautical Center cafeteria.