For over 3 decades the Soaring Safety Foundation has operated an FAA-Approved Flight Instructor Refresher Course for Glider, Airplane, and Helicopter flight instructors. Classes are held at various locations scattered around the country from southern Virginia to Anchorage Alaska and from California to New Hampshire. Classes are held during the winter months (December thru April) when our FIRC instructors are available to teach.

SSF FIRC’s are open to any Flight Instructor wishing to renew their FI certificate (glider, airplane, rotorcraft, …). If your tow-pilots are airplane flight instructors they can also renew by attending the SSF FIRC. The SSF FIRCs are also open to any glider pilot who is interested in learning more about the art of Soaring. You do not need to be a flight instructor to attend a FIRC.

The Soaring Safety Foundation (SSF) provides US flight instructors the ability to renew their FAA flight instructor certificate in a class tailored to the needs of Flight Instructors, pilots, and students. The SSF has several FAA approved ACR (Airman Certification Representative) on staff. At the successful completion of the course, the SSF ACR will use IACRA to issue a new temporary CFI certificate to you. This means that course attendees no longer need to schedule a visit with their local FSDO to complete the renewal process.

One FIRC is held concurrently with the bi-annual SSA soaring convention. This FIRC is held the Tuesday and Wednesday preceding the convention at the convention site. Other FIRCs are held, upon request, around the country. Classes are held during the winter months (December thru April) when our FIRC instructors are available to teach. Unless otherwise noted all FIRCs will have the same time schedule. Classes will start at 8:00 am both on Saturday on Sunday.

All FIRCs are coordinated by a local contact. In Dec 2007 Pat Wager put together a pair of documents to help the local coordinator with this task. The FIRC checklist contains a detailed list of tasks that the local coordinator will perform prior to the FIRC date. The sample invitation letter gives you some guidance of what to tell FIRC attendees. The local contact information for each FIRC will be updated as it becomes available.

Authorized individuals can now access the FIRC registration database to verify who has registered for their FIRC. Local Point of Contact (POC) will only be authorized to look at the registration list for their FIRC. SSF POCs will be authorized to look at all FIRC registration data. The FIRC Registration database is available, Local POCs should send email to the Soaring Safety webmaster to request access to their section of the database.