How dangerous is soaring?

Soaring is riskier than driving a car. Competition soaring and
aggressive cross-country soaring are riskier, still, although they are
typically practiced by more experienced pilots who should (key word)
know how to manage those risks. There's a good article about safety
and risk by former World Champion Bruno Gantenbrink on DG's Web site:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index-e.html. If you fly cross-country or
competitively and haven't read it, please do.

I grew up mouthing the cliche (an international one, apparently, based
on Bruno's article) that the most dangerous part of soaring was the
drive to the airport. In fact, flying is the most dangerous part. In
40+ years of soaring, I've lost quite a few friends and acquaintances
to glider crashes, including my father and my best friend, both highly
experienced pilots. I've been first on the scene at fatal crashes. I
think about the potential downside consequences of soaring before
every contest and often when driving to the gliderport (although,
oddly, seldom when I'm flying). I've got two 13-year-old daughters who
would be devasted if something happened to me while flying.

Yet I continue to fly. Soaring is the most fulfilling, exciting,
rewarding activity I participate in, and I feel more alive for it.
Nothing matches the exhilaration of completing a task or an ambitious
flight knowing I've flown well. And I'm honest enough to admit that if
soaring were completely risk free, it wouldn't have the same appeal. I
suspect more than a few of my fellow pilots share this "condition"
although I would describe none of them as thrill seekers or dare
devils.

Yet I do everything I can to minimize the risks balanced against my
desire to compete and fly cross country. I bought my current glider
because it had a safety cockpit and impact-absorbing landing gear. I
equipped it with a canopy wire deflector bar, an ELT, a 6-point safety
harness, a rear-view mirror, and more than a gallon of easily
accessible drinking water. All this was to keep me out of trouble and
to help me survive trouble if it occurs. I'm considering installing a
transponder or a portable collision avoidance device to reduce what I
think is my biggest risk currently--being hit by a power plane in the
busy airspace where I fly west of New York City. I'm probably more
cautious than some. I know my limits and don't knowingly exceed them.

Soaring isn't for everyone. One pilot I know, a good one, dropped out
of soaring after his wife got sick and died. As much as he loved
soaring, his children were young and he didn't feel it was fair to
them to continue something that increased the risk they might end up
losing both parents. He intends to get back in the game when they're
older. I think he made the right call for him.

I confess that when I was in my 20s, I not only mouthed the cliche
about driving being more dangerous than flying, but I glorified the
risks that even then I acknowledged existed in order to enhance the
sense that I was doing something special, something extreme, something
most people would never experience. Now in my 50s, I see that part of
the appeal of soaring is the ability to push myself up against the
edge of the cliff, look over it, and then back away. I don't need or
want the risk that a power pilot flying head down and locked will plow
into me from behind (as nearly happened a few months ago) or the risk
that someone above me in the gaggle will make a mistake and spin down
through my altitude (as happened a few years ago). The challenge is to
work with the risks I can control. It's the ones I can't control--and
I'd be in denial if I said they didn't exist--that trouble me. There
are enough of those, plus the risk that I will make a bad mistake
someday (I'm not in denial about that, either), to remind me that
soaring is inherently risky compared with most of the other things I
do. To date, those risks are not sufficient to cause me to quit
soaring. But we're all different and what works for me may not apply
to anyone else.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
USA