Safety of winch launch vrs. aero tow?

"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
I like all these points and I suspect that because of the short time
required in a winch launch, and the faster acceleration, and the fact that
you are in a position to land on the runway that you are using at all
times,
the winch launch would be safer, but I still see no statistics! Come on
folks, someone surly has crunched the numbers. Training is crucial in
both,
but what I'm looking for is numbers, I have plenty of opinions myself.

Boggs

OK, the BGA accident database is available on the web. The database is
searchable for flights that began with a winch launch. Note, however, that
most of the accidents in this section do not relate directly to winch
launch.
I think that there were only three or four accidents over a ten year period
that actually happened during the winch launch. The rest were accidents
that happened later in a flight that began with a winch launch.

It seems to me that if winch launch accident data is hard to come by, that
in itself is good news. If accidents happened frequently, there would be
lots of hard data.

Bill Daniels