plane down near seattle

"Cockpit Colin" wrote in message
...
If I had a gun with a million hole chamber and only 1 round I wouldn't be
too nervous about spinning the chamber once - I'd be real nervous about
doing it a million times. The chances of blowing my brains out on any one
occasion is always 1 in a million as you say - but do it enough times and
the chance of that one chance coming up is increased proportionately

Not really. Funny thing about statistics, they don't always make intuitive
sense to someone that hasn't sat down and looked at the math.

Your statement would be correct if you were talking about an agreement made
in advance to spin the barrel and pull the trigger some very large number of
times. But that wasn't your statement.

Every time you choose to take a try at your million-chambered revolver, you
have exactly a 1 in 1 million chance of killing yourself. Once you've taken
a try and survived, the next try still has exactly a 1 in 1 million chance
of killing yourself.

No matter how many times you take a try, the next time you take a try, the
chance is still exactly 1 in 1 million.

Now, how does this matter with respect your fire suit? I suppose it depends
on how you think about it. In one respect, each time you fly you have
exactly the same chance of burning up as any of your passengers do. In that
respect, it does seem unfair that you fly around in your fire suit while
allowing your passengers to go unprotected.

In other respect, however, you have "made an agreement in advance" to make a
number of flights. The actual number is perhaps not known with any
accuracy, but it may be safe to say that it's hundreds, if not thousands of
flights. By choosing (again, in advance) to wear a fire suit on each and
every flight, you are a) betting that you WILL crash and burn during some
point in those hundreds or thousands of flights, and b) making a decision to
try to protect yourself against that eventuality.

But the truth remains that for any given flight, no matter how many flights
you've already made, you still have exactly the same chance of crashing and
burning as you had on the previous flight, and will have on the subsequent
flight, statistically speaking. If on any flight, you feel it's necessary
for you to wear a fireproof suit, a passenger would be well within their
rights to feel like they are being treated with less care than the pilot is
treating himself. After all, on that flight, both the passenger and the
pilot have the exact same chance of being in the plane if and when it
crashes and burns.

So to me, the real question is this: when you are flying with passengers, do
you allow one of the passengers to wear your fire suit instead of wearing it
yourself, or do you take advantage of them and protect yourself to a greater
degree than you protect your passengers?

Another question would be: do you wear the same suit when driving a car?
After all, there's a risk of being in an accident where the car (and
occupants) are consumed by fire in an automobile as well. How about when
you fly commercially? Ride in someone else's car? Stay in a hotel? Sleep
in your own bed?

Not very many aviation accidents result in one or more occupants being
burned when they otherwise would have survived the accident. Although it
does happen, the risk is comparable to the risk of being burned in any
number of other situations in which I'm guessing you don't wear your suit.
I don't know what a full Nomex suit costs, but I know that I'd choose to
spend that money on other more relevant safety devices, like a nice ANR
headset, or a backup handheld radio, or a handheld GPS, rather than wasting
it on clothing that is probably never going to be of any use to me, and
which does nothing to improve the safety of my passengers.

Which is not to say you shouldn't wear your suit if you feel it's useful.
It's just to say that I don't really understand your thinking, and probably
never will. I wouldn't be surprised if more people share that sentiment
than don't.

Pete