How safe is it, really?

"Mike Rapoport" wrote
Last month, I invited a friend to fly to Moose Creek to go fishing. He
asked if flying in the Helio was "safe". I said: "Not really, we will be
flying a single engine airplane over mountains with nowhere to land if the
engine quits. We would probably survive the crash since the airplane is so
slow. Do you want to go or not?" He showed up at the hanger with camping
gear for a week which was an appropriate thing to do.

And I would have done the same (especially if I could get a little
stick time). You do what seems reasonable to reduce the risk, and if
after that it still seems worth it, then you do it.

I've been watching this thread with much the same reaction as you. In
fact, pretty mcuh the only reason I haven't contributed much to the
thread is that you've pretty much covered the ground I would have. I
have only one thing to add, and now I'm going to add it.

It seems to me like most pilots here are in denial about the true
risks of what they are doing. I also believe this is the primary
reason we have the product liability climate in GA that we do.

There have been lots of lawsuits against aircraft and component
manufacturers by grieving widows and orphans. A few have even been
successful. I'm not going to claim that the lawsuits were wholly
without basis. By modern standards, many of the aircraft and
components are poorly desinged, built, and maintained. There are all
sorts of reasons for this, but it's an undeniable fact. The GA
fatality rate due to mechanical problems alone is about the same as
the automobile fatality rate as a whole. This doesn't include all the
accidents that the NTSB categorizes as pure pilot error but which have
a lot to do with the sad reality that the aircraft are, in certain
circumstances, so difficult to operate that even the best of us can't
hope to get it right 100% of the time.

But here is the reality - the design flaws are no secret to anyone.
Anyone who flies a taildragger from the back seat knows you can't see
crap from there - but there are controls there anyway. Anyone who
flies a slippery complex airplane in IMC knows that flying it without
an AI can be difficult, and experienced pilots have screwed it up
fatally before, and AI's and vacuum pumps are failure prone - but
backup AI's with independent power sources are not required and are
mostly not present. We all know that engines fail. We all know that
weather forecasts are horoscopes with numbers. We know that our fuel
tanks and carburetors can leak, that our leaning procedures are not
terribly repeatable, and that our fuel gauges are largely inaccurate.
None of this is news.

So why do so many pilots minimize these risks, focus on relatively
small segments of the accident picture, and in general pretend that
private flying is safer than it is? I think it's because if they told
the truth, their wives would certainly never fly with them or allow
their kids to fly, and maybe stop them from flying entirely.

The problem happens when some of these pilots inevitably crash and
die. The thought process their families go through must be something
like this:

He was a very careful and safe pilot. Flying is safe. Therefore
someone else must have been at fault in his accident. Let's punish
that someone else so this never happens again.

Michael