On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:34:59 -0500, "Neil Gould"
wrote in
:

Recently, Larry Dighera posted:

Below is a first draft of my critique of this report. Any
suggestions, error corrections, or other critique is welcome.
=====================================

While I understand the importance of a response to this kind of article, I
think that it can be attacked on a more basic level. In my opinion, it is
flawed in its purpose, as it poses a problem that is miniscule in
comparison to other activities of the general public. For example, an
annual average of 583 fatalities in GA doesn't approach the weekly
fatalities for driving an automobile. If reducing accidental death is the
issue that makes this study important, it is a total waste of resources to
focus on GA.

That seems a valid point to me. Many thanks for your input.

To address your response, I would suggest that your language in places
consitutes the kind of emotional response that you criticize in the
report. For example:

Crash Rates
Civilian aviation generally can be divided into 2 groups:
commercial and noncommercial flights.2 Commercial flights
transport individuals and goods to generate revenue; they include
operations of major airlines, commuter air carriers, and air
taxis. Noncommercial flights, usually called general aviation,
encompass a wide array of activities-emergency medical services
(EMS), sightseeing, flight training, traffic reporting, aerial
surveys, search and rescue, crop dusting, firefighting, logging,
recreation, and personal or business use. General aviation
aircraft range from small private airplanes and business jets to
helicopters, hot-air balloons, and gliders.

[This paragraph reveals the researchers' lack of understanding of the
definition of General Aviation. Air Taxi, pipe-line and power-line
patrol, crop dusting, and air charter flights all generate revenue,
are piloted by airmen holding FAA Commercial or Airline Transport
Pilot certificates, and they are all General Aviation operations. In
fact, other than military aviation operations and airline (Code of
Federal Regulations Title 14 Part 121) operations, all aviation
operations are classified under the General Aviation designation. To
assert that medical rescue helicopter ambulance services, flight
training, traffic reporting, aerial surveys, and crop dusting are
noncommercial is ridiculous.]

Perhaps it would be better to leave off the last sentence, thus the
paragraph would more strongly support your opening contention that the
researchers lack an understanding of the definition of GA.

I fail to discern the emotional aspect of my response that you cite.
Vehement perhaps, but factual none the less.

I also don't understand why you would want to contribute to the misguided
effort of this report by rationalizing the comparison between GA and
commercial activities.

I don't think I've done that. In the portions of my rebuttal you have
cited above, I've attempted to show that the JHU authors words reveal
their misunderstanding of the term General Aviation.

It is probably true that any comparison between
general public activities and commercial activities would show similar
results. I would expect that there are fewer annual fatalities from riding
buses than from driving cars, fewer deaths in chauferred limosines, fewer
commercial truck fatalities than personal truck fatalities, fewer
motorcycle racing deaths than personal motocycle deaths, fewer Navy Seal
deaths than recreational SCUBA deaths, etc. In short, the report's
conclusion is a no-brainer that didn't deserve the expenditure of public
monies, and doesn't enlighten the reader in any meaningful way. It is
purely alarmist, and IMO should be exposed as such.

As you stated in the opening of your follow up article, it's flawed in
its purpose due to it's concern with a low priority issue by
comparison to activities with higher fatality rates.

I suspect that the underlying issue is that bad decision making is
dangerous, regardless of the activity. IMO, shifting the focus from bad
decision making to mechanical or structural concerns misses the point.
And, again, let's not lose sight of the maginitude of this problem; 583
annual deaths is likely less than deaths from any other activity of the
general public. If the purpose is to save lives, GA should be pretty far
down the list of priorities.


Agreed. Thank you for your input.