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Old September 27th 17, 05:55 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Sean Fidler
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Default Glider near miss with Airliner (emergency climb) near Chicago yesterday?

Near 100% personal responsibility (“trust us”) in high traffic areas? Come on! Apparently, this was not the case in Chicago last weekend (see the near miss of a glider by a United 737). I would immediately put a bet down to challenge that "near" 100% figure as “highly inaccurate” and, more importantly, utterly meaningless regarding strategic positioning for our sport (if a major accident was to occur).

Bottom line: soaring has a significant safety culture problem. The outsider would see our recent political maneuvering (fighting the ADSB mandate under the SSA organization) as an aviation community that is trying to avoid safety in the name of a relatively small amount of money. Much of the gliding community appears motivated by a culture which prides itself on keeping all aspects of the sport as cheap as possible. Most old-timers seem to despise any new technology, of any sort, often furiously, and many of them have now banded together in the SSA good old boys ranks in a constant crusade to prevent any new technologies successful adoption. All of this has been systemic, consistent and is easily demonstrable. See Flarm. See ADSB. See contest tracking and satellite safety trackers. See mobile phones. See weather. See, for example, consider how long it can take to find a pilot who crashes in the trees at ridge contests (often with no Satellite tracker, an inadequate or non-functioning ELT, or no location device at all). Etc.

If you listen to some of the attitudes expressed on this thread (or the parallel one he https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...ng/drv1sFbYkPs) alone, and especially similar opinions on RAS over the years, your “100%” premise is disproven almost immediately. It’s those general “cheap before safety” attitudes that are the fundamental problem. And, that is why, in my opinion, the FAA ADS-B mandate was a good thing. The sport of soaring needs important technology "catch up" and some minimum new safety standards moving forward in regards to electronic collision safety and general aircraft. Small alterations or changes to the FAA ADS-B mandate for gliders would have made sense, but dropping the FAA ADS-B mandate entirely may eventually prove to be a total disaster, I fear. Again, see Chicago last weekend and the near miss of a glider by a 737. See the numerous other collisions and near misses.

I have not flown that much this summer, but I have still witnessed a significant number of commercial airliners nearby (including SE of Reno airspace last week, well outside of class C, at around 12,000 MSL, with a transponder on). It’s amazing how close we glider pilots fly to commercial traffic, even in rural locations, and how often. Most of us tend to loiter near and under clouds, where visual detection becomes significantly limited or just plain impossible. We all know the truth here. The risk of having non-ADSB (or even transponder) equipped gliders in such constant proximity to airline traffic is unacceptably high to our sport. Furthermore, we do not need a major airline accident to have the same PR catastrophe for the sport of gliding. A fatal collision with a family flying along in their light private airplane will also do just fine for the politicians who undoubtedly will react swiftly to preventing future accidents and calming public concern.

I’m happy to be on the record here and remain highly concerned about the safety attitudes displayed both here and elsewhere from the gliding community, rules committee, etc. I find it disappointing. I hope it changes.


On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 10:33:09 AM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:19:04 PM UTC-4, Richard Wilkening wrote:
Look at the resistance to Flarm.


In the contest community (i.e. where Flarm makes sense), the equipage rate seems to be North of 80%, DESPITE the fact that Flarm is expensive, hard to set up & test, has customer service that is pretty much non-existent.

In high traffic corridors (NYC, Reno...) transponder installations are nearly universal among XC guys.

So... your premise that safety doesn't sell appears to be incorrect.

Going forward, the obvious thing to do is send a bottle of smart pills to the guys at the FAA that can pave the way to approval for a low cost VFR only TABS system for low cost VFR only aircraft. Safety is a much easier sell when the cost is reasonable and if the FAA were concerned with VFR **safety** they'd act on this obvious fact.

Oh and btw: the airliners can see me at 6 miles RIGHT NOW by adding flarm.. Quit laughing, I'm serious. Send the serial output data to TCAS or whatever. I don't expect them to do this. The airlines, like the FAA, are more interested in having some powerless victim to blame when the **** hits the fact than they are in prevention.

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8