In article ,
"vaughn" wrote:

"Flaps_50!" wrote in message
...

Seems like glider piloting is a problem (it can't be the iron fairy)
or is there another cause?

Measuring accidents on the basis of flight hours does not necessarily give
you
the whole picture. If you had ever spent much time at a glider training
operation, you would quickly see part of the difference between power
training
and glider training, and how the statistics can get skewed when you only look
at
flight hours. Glider primary training flights tend to be so short that
students
traditionally count "flights" rather than "hours". With gliders or
airplanes,
accidents happen overwhelmingly on takeoff or landing. As it turns out,
glider
students spend a greater percentage of their flight time in those two
(statistically more dangerous) phases of flight.

Very true, and there are a lot of other factors as well.

1) Gliders spend a significant amount of time flying in close proximity
to tow planes and other gliders. Two people were just killed this past
weekend in California in such an accident. Mid-air collisions are a
bigger threat than they might be in powered aircraft. There's even a
system called FLARM which was designed specifically to warn gliders of
other gliders on a collision course. (Not yet available in the US due to
our lawyerly nature, alas.)

2) A glider pilot's ideal day is very different from a power pilot's
ideal day. A fantastic day with booming lift is not much different from
a dangerous day where the winds are too dangerous, or thunderstorms will
lurk. Activities like ridge running can put gliders in close proximity
to terrain in strong turbulence for extended periods of time.

3) Many gliders are rigged by their pilots every day before flying. A
mistake during rigging can be fatal.

4) Landing patterns must be adjusted to match conditions, because the
pilot only has one shot at it and the amount of energy he has to land
with is relatively small. If the pilot experiences strong sink, strong
winds, or just arriving too low, he must have the mental flexibility to
abandon a standard square pattern and do whatever it takes to get to the
runway safely. Many will get stuck in their habitual pattern and it can
be fatal when it doesn't work out.

Of all of these, the only one that really happens *because* there's no
engine, as opposed to simply being an aspect of a sport that's built on
flying planes with no engines, is the last one. That one is not a
substantial risk as long as you maintain the necessary mental
flexibility in the pattern.

#1 can be managed with smart procedures and equipment, although not
eliminated.

#2 is completely up to the individual pilot. Many people will stay home
on a screaming ridge/wave day because it means strong turbulence and
gusts at the airport, and they don't want to deal with it. I personally
have substantially different standards for my own personal flying as
compared to taking a passenger.

#3, like so many things in aviation, can be mitigated with checklists,
checklists, checklists.

Is gliding more dangerous than regular powered flight? The stats seem to
say so, and I won't disagree. However, I don't see the danger as being
because there's no engine, as people sometimes ask me about, but rather
other factors.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon