In article , Bob
Noel wrote:
Take away the danger from flying and you must necessary take away most
of the fun of it - things like this would have to go.

um, danger is not why I love flying.

snip

I never said it was. I said if you were to make GA as safe as the
airlines you'd lose the fun.

My flying became safer with the installation of a strikefiner,
but didn't become less fun.
snip
bottomline is that flying would not lose any enjoyment for me
if it was safer.

Do you know how the airlines make it so safe? Mainly it's by having
extremely strict procedures and a LOT of equipment. Would you still find
flying fun if you had to file IFR flight plans for every flight,
required a minimum crew of 2, all the regulations that airlines operate
under? Or do you never look out the window, think "It's a nice day, I
think I'll fly for half an hour" at lunchtime?

The flexibility of GA is what carries some of the risk. With all that
equipment that you enumerated, your flight risks are still MUCH greater
than that of the commercial airlines. If you want airline safety - then
you have to have airline inflexibility and airline procedures. Going for
a mostly unplanned half hour sightseeing flight will always carry
inherent risks precisely because it's a half hour sightseeing flight -
NOT because you are seeking danger. The flexibility of GA carries
inherent risks, and the only way to get rid of those risks is to get rid
of the flexibility. To me, that flexibility is where the fun is. I can
fly formation with hawks if I want, but I recognise to be able to do
this there will be inherent risks - and I think the biggest problem is
many GA pilots live in denial over these inherent risks.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"