Snowbirds down

Icebound wrote:
The Minister's remarks were in response to the usual probing by
mindless
reporters bringing up the aging hardware, 10 million annual cost, and
past
accidents (like 5 deaths since 1971, now doing 60 shows a year.). In
the
chronology, the media even included a pilot killed in a car accident,
just
to fatten it up (that would make 6).

Ignoring the car accident, we're looking at 5 fatal accidents over the
course of 33 years, with a team of what, 11 pilots in any given year?
That's less than 400 pilot-years, and 5 fatalities. So what we're
looking at is a flying activity where even the most experienced pilots
(1300 hours in military jets is the MINIMUM to be considered) have less
than a 99% chance of surviving any single year. By contrast, there are
around 600,000 pilots in the US, and less than 600 fatalities (not all
pilots) annually.

Looking at it from another perspective, 60 shows a year (less in the
past) and 9 airplanes (less in the past) is AT BEST still well under
100,000 total hours flown, including repositioning flights. The Nall
report shows an overall GA fatality rate of 1.33 per 100,000 hours.
These guys managed 5 in less than 100,000.

One has to wonder why, given no-expense-spared training and
maintenance, and using only the most capable and experienced pilots,
this demonstration team can't even match the depressing statistics of
GA as a whole. Now I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that safety
isn't the most important thing - not even as important as putting on a
good show for the crowd - but before you rush to the defense of the
Snowbirds saying it should be business as usual after the
investigation, be sure you're comfortable with that too, because the
numbers don't lie - they're not a safe operation by any reasonable
measure.

The problem is that even some military grumble that this is not a
*military*
unit, and they are right, it isn't.

I enjoy watching a good aerobatic demonstration as much as the next
guy, and I'm quite willing to pay for the privilege (and have) but as a
taxpayer I too would question whether millions of tax dollars should be
spent on an activity that is demonstrably dangerous and of no military
value. Plenty of aerobatic demonstration teams exist without taxpayer
support - why can't this one?

Michael