About Good Pilots and Bad Pilots

"A Lieberman" wrote in message
.. .
I would think that no matter how bad a medical condition is, there are
many
other means to accomplish getting there other then having a very
distracted
pilot with get there itis.

There may or may not be other means available. Matt was describing a
situation in which there aren't; *different* kinds of situations have no
bearing on the point he was making about *that* situation.

Just how much more likely do you suppose a fatality is when a pilot is
highly distracted and flying VFR over the top? More than, say, 100 times
more likely than usual? A typical few-hour GA flight has less than one
chance in 20,000 of resulting in a fatality (see the Nall Report), so a
hundred-fold increase in risk would still mean less than a half-percent
chance of death. Or even a *thousand-fold* increase would still mean less
than a five percent chance--still far preferable to the alternative in the
hypothetical situation Matt described. Is there any reason to believe that
Matt's hypothetical situation increases the risk of fatal accident by much
more than a factor of 1,000?

Matt was saying my flying over the top with a VFR licence was a bad
piloting decision. Would you say that was a bad decision or a good
decision?

I'd say it was a bad decision unless you had reason to be confident that
clearer weather was within your flight range, and unless you continued to
monitor the weather using the available en route resources (it would be an
error on a pilot's part--perhaps reflecting a gap in training--to embark on
an XC flight without being prepared to use those resources if needed).

I question the decision to launch under conditions he describe as a "good
piloting" decision. AS you say yourself, the risk factor is enormous, so
much more then my decision to fly VFR over the top.

The risk in Matt's situation is indeed much greater than in yours. But
there's no reason to think that greater risk amounts to more than a
few-percent chance of fatality. In a situation where *not* flying has a
*higher* risk than that of resulting in a fatality, it is therefore a good
decision to fly. You always have to look at the benefit side of the equation
as well as the risk side.

--Gary