The 56th Annual Corporate Aviation Safety Seminar (CASS), jointly sponsored by NBAA and the Flight Safety Foundation, last week hosted about 350 attendees and 30 exhibitors. Flight Safety Foundation president Bill Voss presented this year’s Business Aviation Meritorious Service Award to Bombardier Aerospace, for annual sponsorship of its free safety standdowns, now offered in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and soon in Asia (China). Pete Agur, managing director of The VanAllen Group, moderated the CASS 2011 sessions and told audience members, “See if you can find something in each of these presentations that brings a new idea to you, and that you can take home.” Those ideas covered satellite-based augmentation systems; fatigue management; runway excursions; safety management systems; CAE Flightscape’s application of the simulator operations quality assurance concept by incorporating real-world operations data into modern training programs; cabin safety; unmanned aircraft; medical certification; and wildlife hazards. Airbus executive aviation chief pilot Robin Pursey closed CASS 2011 with a strong recommendation for evidence-based training, which teaches pilots how to handle real-life problems, as opposed to rarely occurring events that are part of recurrent training “box ticking.”