On 13 Apr 2007 19:38:25 -0700, "K Baum" wrote in
.com:

Larry,
not exactly sure what you are trying to say here, but if you are going
to rebut this article you should have some references. Your opinion is
nice, but facts would be better.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll see what sort of supporting
citations I can find.

For example you state that the author
implies that GA is more inherently dangerous than the airlines. This
is actually true and the statistics bear this out.

I don't refute that contention.

I just don't believe the comparison of fatality rates between
different types of aircraft operation is useful or valid. Consider
the hazards involved in crop=dusting vs airline transport operations.
If you strengthen the airframe, and develop fuel bladders capable of
withstanding impact into a granite mountain face until you can only
fill the hopper half full and still be within the weight and balance
envelope, the fatality rate will always remain higher for duster
operations than for airline transport operations.

Another example is
where you state that the reason for more GA crashes as opossed to the
airlines is because there is more GA planes. This doesnt take into
account the fact that airliners fly more.

Huh? More? More hours? More miles? More passenger miles?

There are nearly 26000
airline flights a day (This is actually up from 9/11 by a couple
grand), how many GA operations are there? Does the typical GA plane
spend over 300 hours a month in the air? I dont want to beleger this
and I hope you get the idea.

You seem to be overlooking the fact that there are over ten times as
many GA aircraft as airliners:

There is no doubt that this report contains some errors, but I would
sugest that you rebut the report on the basis of survivability of GA
crashes and not the comparison of ailines and GA fatality rates.

And I would prefer the Johns Hopkins University researchers not
publicly make invalid and misleading comparisons also.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try to incorporate more of that into
my rhetoric.

Good luck and let us know what you come up with.
..
Thank you for your input. I know I have a narrow point of view just
as the researchers do. It's good to see others reactions.