"TaxSrv" wrote in message
...
"Gary Drescher" wrote:

If that's true, then we don't really know what proportion
of flights may have had accidents (fatal or otherwise) that
were not reported as YE flights, even though the flight
would have been reported as such if it'd been successful.
That alone could easily distort the statistics by a factor of
two or more.

I agree, and NTSB stuff enables "approximate" methodology. Except
that a number of minor accidents aren't reported to NTSB in
general, so a similar % for Y/E won't distort comparisons.

As far as we know, accidents that go unreported entirely are no less common
among YE flights than among other flights. But there's an entirely
different, additional distortion that I'm addressing: if there are many
flights that might not count as YE flights if there's an accident, but will
count as YE if there's not an accident, then that will sharply distort the
comparison (especially for serious or fatal accidents, which are almost
certainly reported to the NTSB).

On a serious/fatal Y/E flight, EAA will know about it if their up
to $1 million insurance coverage is sought after, and hence will be
reported to NTSB.

Hm, does the NTSB necessarily know about crash-related insurance claims,
settlements, or lawsuits? If a plaintiff says a flight was a YE flight and
the EAA denies it, would the NTSB necessarily report the lawsuit or its
outcome? (Does the EAA's $1M coverage have the usual GA cap of $100K per
passenger? That certainly limits the incentive for lawsuits.)

--Gary