How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

On Monday, January 13, 2014 5:55:05 AM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:

Many years ago there was some sort of mortality list published. It's the only list I've ever seen gliding on. It stated:

The odds of an accidental death, 1/1500
The odds of death in a gliding accident, 1/1800

There are 6000 SSA members in clubs/chapters. Some other number fly in private settings and with commercial operations. That number might be 2000 to 6000, which gives me an active number of 8000 to 12000, so quite a variation. I recently saw an FAA number of 24,400 glider pilots, but we all no many are no longer actively using the rating.

Picking the middle ground at 10,000, there were 5 fatalities in 2013. 1/2000. There were 8 in 2012, 1/1250 (two sort of anomalies; one a Pipistrel Virus, one a triple fatal) Might normalize this to 6, which would be 1/1666. 2011, 9, 1/1.1111 (one may have been stricken in flight, yet there it is and those who might have, did not prevent this pilot from flying. Another was probably probably like the Pipistrel count). So, it could be rationalized as 7, 1/1428. 2010, 5 or 1/2000. 2009, 7 of the 8 were in gliders. 2008, 7 again. 2007, 3 so 1/3333 beat the odds. 2007, 6, but one was most assuredly a suicide, so a skewed factor, thus 5 is the acceptable number. Again, we're at 1/2000. 1/1800 just kind of looks about right given what we know about the pilot population. The number is likely better than overall odds of traffic, ladders, being a pedestrian, or cleaning the gutters, etc.. Taking the raw numbers, gliding seems quite reasonable if you are in good health, use due diligence, and remain current. The SSF would like to improve on our numbers. I think we might. But I think it could require a major re-thinking of our soaring culture.
That exists in our competition community to some extent. It's greater in some of the European soaring organizations. I know pilots that reject this approach. A couple of years ago a notable instructor suggested the FAA was killing us. Not sure I agree, but I don't think they're helping. To that end, I'm not sure many feel EASA is helping either.

My $0.02,

Frank Whiteley