Sure. We can rephrase the question to get any answer you are looking
for. Let me know which answer you want to hear...I'll give you the
'right' question to ask. The question I 'choose' to look at is "Which
mode of travel is more likely to get me from point A 100 miles to
point B without injury or death?" Well, the answer to *that specific*
question is PROVABLY 'general aviation flying' over 'automobile'. Even
'owner flown GA' over automobile. You want to ask a different
question? Only considering deaths? Fine...you'll get the answer that
GA travel is less safe.

And by the way, the Nall Report only covers Fixed Wing GA aircraft
weighing under 12,500 lbs. So that takes out many of the profesionally
driven G-IVs, Lears, Citations, Challengers, etc.

You want to break out the numbers to prove various things? Great.
Multiengine flying is *much* more dangerous than single engine flying,
at least in GA, per the Nall Report. Multiengine aircraft flew
something along the lines of 8% of GA hours, but were responsible for
almost 22% of fatalities. Should we tell people that, statistically,
if they only fly in single engine planes they will be much safer than
if they fly in multiengine GA planes? Lets look at hours. According
to the Nall Report, almost 80% of accidents involved pilots with less
than 500 hours in type. So should we break it out and tell the
original poster 'Well, once your husband reaches 500 hours in type, he
becomes *much* safer, statistically?'. Almost 40% of accidents
involved pilots with less than 500 hours total. Should we tell her
that once he hits 500 hours, he's safe to fly with?

So what numbers should we use? I chose to use 'all' GA versus 'all'
auto travel. Which definition of 'safe' should we use?

Either way, there is not much chance of dying in either. In a GA
airplane, I'd have to fly almost 8000 hours before I even had a 10%
chance of dying in a plane. But by then, of course, my risk per hour
would be much lower since high-time pilots are clearly much safer than
low-time pilots. I don't think that would apply to driving.

But either way, I'm not worrying much about it. For that 10%
probability of dying in an airplane to happen I'd have to fly *very*
actively...10 hours per week, every week, month-in and month-out for
over 15 years.

And one of the other issues was about how much pilot 'personality' and
decision making affects safety. Let's just look at single-engine
fixed-wing travel for the moment...that accounted for 412 deaths in
2001. Maneuvering flight accidents are almost *always* avoidable.
Actually pretty easy to avoid...don't buzz, always watch your
airspeed, coordinate your turns...the basic stuff I drill into primary
students all the time. Maneuvering accidents accounted for 38% of
fixed-wing single-engine fatal accidents. Weather-related incidents
accounted for another 10% of fatal accidents.

OK. This isn't rocket science. If a pilot is suffucuently well trained
and disciplined to *never* buzz, to *always* go around when an landing
looks shaky [so they don't have to do erratic maneuvering to get back
to the centerline], *never* go below the sector safe altitue, unless
you know precisely where every obstacle is, and *never* fly unless you
know that the weather is well above marginal VFR conditions, then that
pilot has removed himself from the conditions that cause nearly 50% of
all fatal accidents.

If you fly with/as a pilot who is able to avoid those conditions that
lead to those deaths (actually pretty easy to fix, with sufficient
training and discipline), then you are left with an accident
probability of 1/2 of what it is for all GA pilots taken as a whole.

If you remove those, do you know how many fatal accidents would have
occurred in 2001, in single-engine fixed-wing planes? 65. Total.

Take these numbers with some 'reasonable' assumptions, and now you are
up near one fatality for every 15 million miles, with a pilot
'disciplined' and well-trained enough to not out himself in
circumstances where a manevuvering or weather incident is likely.

So basically, if you fly with a pilot in a fixed-wing single, who is
proficient, who is well trained, and who is disciplined enough to
avoid the almost-entirely avoidable accidents involving weather and
maneuvering, then you are in a situation where, before you would have
even an 0.1 probability of dying in an aircraft accident, you'd have
to fly with him 10 hours per week, every week of every month, for *30
years*. Is that safe enough for you?

As I said before, there are lots of ways to look at the numbers...and
depending on how you want to slice and dice them, and which questions
you choose to ask, you can find anything. But in the end, as a CFI and
as a pilot, I feel *very* comfortable telling people (truthfully) that
general aviation is quite safe. And I believe I have the evidence to
back that up.


Cheers,

Chris



"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message link.net...
I would say safety is a function of surviving the trip! Your last numbers
showed a fatal accident rate for aircraft 4.6 time greater than for autos on
a per mile basis. Looking at another set of numbers for autos, the NTSB
shows a rate of 1.48 fatal accidents/100 million miles. Converting the NTSB
data for GA to miles (assuming 125kts and 1.15 sm/nm) we get 9.46 fatals/100
million miles and as I pointed out earlier, this number understates the risk
for light GA personal flying by a factor of two. The overwhelming majority
of auto injuries are minor, some are not even noticed before the ambulance
chaser suggest them. If you rephrased the question including the fact that
the flying is 12 times as likely to result in death but the auto has a
higher chance of minor injury, I doubt if anyone would consider flying to be
safer.

Mike
MU-2