Ron Wanttaja wrote:
Gregory Hall wrote:

This is the safest homebuilt IMO.(VariEze ). The canard makes it
foolproof.

If that were the case, the Velocity would have a better safety record
than the Lancair family. Based on my statistics from 1999 through
2006, it doesn't... the Velocity has about a 20% higher accident rate.
In fact, the Velocity has a rate almost three TIMES higher that of
the RV fleet. Which isn't doesn't use canards, either.

The difference in fleet size does affect the statistics, of course....

Still, it might be reasonably argued that when a Lancair aircraft is
involved in an accident, it has a higher probability of yielding fatalities
than other aircraft. Consider:

I did a simple NTSB search[1] (from 1-1-1962 to present) using "Lancair" in
the Make/Model field and it appears that out of 151 matching accident
records, 70 involved fatalities. Is that 46% value close to typical or is
it, as I suspect, on the high side[2]?

When I entered "Lancair Legacy" in the Make/Model field out of 11 matching
records 7 of them involved fatalities. The 63% value seems even more
unusual. But the accident count is a small number, so may be misleading.

(Yes - I know the entered keywords may not find all relevant records, but
I'm assuming the missed records have similar proportions of fatal to total
accidents as the matching records.)

If the fractions are not typical, could it be because Lancair
incidents/non-fatal "accidents" aren't reported as often as for other
makes? Or is the aircraft dangerously unforgiving such that an accident has
a high likelyhood of leading to fatalities? Or is there another reason for
the differences?

[1] http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp

[2] By comparison, from 1-1-1962 to present and entering "701" in
Make/Model and setting "Amateur Built" to Yes yielded 27 records for the
Zenith CH 701 aircraft. Only one of those records involved fatalities. Only
4% of accidents involved fatalities.