"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
Does anyone know how to extract the "stupid pilot trick" fatalities
(I.E.: Running out of gas; Flying into terrain; Buzzing your
girlfriend's house; etc.) from this statistic?

Why would you want to?

Because I'm interesting in *my* probability of dying in a plane crash,
not anyone elses.

Since I:

a) Usually fly with two pilots on board
b) Have a well-oiled cockpit resource management scheme in place
c) Always top off the tanks after each flight
d) Never fly IFR
e) Never fly at night
f) Never "buzz" anyone's house
g) Never skip a pre-flight inspection
h) Personally supervise the maintenance of my plane
i) Don't let anyone else fly my plane
j) Rarely fly in mountains
k) Fly twice per week, on average
l) Maintain excellent health
m) Don't "skate" on maintenance
n) Keep the plane in a locked hangar

...I conclude that I may eliminate many of the "stupid pilot tricks"
from my personal risk assessment.

Trouble is, I don't know how to do that...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I think that your question proves that you are at least thinking about your
safety and risk management which is good (and more than many do). However I
suggest that it might be more useful to concentrate on our personal risk
management rather than attempting a quantified personal risk assessment.

I think that we will agree with the NTSB that most aircraft accidents are
due to pilot error and I would submit that a large portion of those errors
are due to human factors that (being human) we all have to some degree. In
this case suggesting that you are not likely to commit SPT seems to be
indicative of what in human factors training is an example of the hazardous
thought pattern of 'invulnerability'. It is akin to 'it can't happen to
me', and while it may provide us with some comfort I would suggest that it
is the false 'fat, dumb and happy' feeling that comes just before 'oh oh'
and 'oh ****'.

While I am sure that you learned a great deal from your SNF trip I think you
must agree that sections of your trip story were starting to read like an
accident report. We always say that an accident is usually the result of a
cascading chain of events and our task as pilots is to break the chain as
early as possible. I would submit that in this discussion the way to break
the first link in this chain is to admit to ourselves that we are all
capable of SPT.

Here in Canada human factors training is required as part of the PPL, CPL
and the ATPL ground training and I suspect is also required in the US. In
an earlier post John Ousterhout provided a link to a website that seems to
have some very good material http://www.cyberair.tv/tower/faa/jtm/index.html
Transport Canada publishes two excellent books 'Human Factors for Aviation'
'Basic Handbook TP12863E' and 'Advanced Handbook TP12864E' which are the
texts usually used for ground instruction, there is also an instructors
guide but I do not have the cat#. Unfortunately TC is not as enlightened as
the FAA and AFAIK these manuals are not available on the net as our cheap
government expects us to buy them in paper form. While looking for a link
on the TC site I did stumble on this which may be of some interest
http://www.transportcanada.ca/CivilA...tIII/human.htm
http://www.transportcanada.ca/CivilA...rtIII/menu.htm

I would respectfully suggest that you add human factors to your personal
recurrent training program. Like Pogo said "We have seen the enemy and it
is us."

Happy landings,