You can't fly a glider the way airlines fly. Airline pilots flying general aviation aircraft on their days off have the same accident rate as nonairline pilots. I'm not defending ****ty flying, just pointing out that the airline model is not applicable outside of the airlines. From being around the reckless fringes of aviation I think the only method that improves safety is mockery and social shame. Don't help pilots hide their stupid, instead openly mock poor piloting decisions. Safety through bullying. Yes it is unpleasant, that is why it works.
On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 10:49:36 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane