Towing Accident Rate vs GA?

At 13:45 25 January 2011, wrote:
I thought glider flying was 4 times more dangerous then GA. Our
annual death toll is low likely because there are so few participants,
flying relatively low hours(for the most part.) No idea about
towing #'s, but we seem to lose a tow pilot or two a year, how many
tow pilots are there? Couple thousand? With 30000 glider pilots in
the US, less than half that as members of the SSA(some of them are
inactive life members, and people that renew because they are going to
fly this year...), I'd guess 5,000 'active' glider pilots, even at
15,000 active pilots the numbers per participant are up there. I'm
not advocating for anything just pointing out that gliding is more
dangerous than it appears.
On Jan 25, 7:40=A0am, Jamie Shore wrote:
I know that I can review the NTSB database and answer this myself but
I
a=
m hoping that someone else has already done the homework.

Two Questions
1. What is the accident, incident and/or fatality rate of towing
gliders
=
vs GA?
2. Same question but comparing glider flying in general to GA.

I don't recall ever hearing statistics for #1 above. Tom Knauff has
refer=
red to statistics that suggest flying gliders is slightly more dangerous
th=
an GA(maybe it was comparing gliders to driving your car).

Thanks,
Jamie Shore



I don't know about the US, but I was recently sent some figure from a UK
AAIB (Air Accident Investigation Branch Report)

On an hourly basis, the UK accident rates over a 10 period we

light aircraft:
174.4 reportable accidents per million hours
10.6 fatal accidents per million hours (3 out of 85 fatal accidents
involved a glider tug)

light helicopters:
128.8 reportable accidents per million hours
15.9 fatal accidents per million hours.

gyroplanes:
1,422.4 reportable accidents per million hours
400.0 fatal accidents per million hours (!!)

microlights:
347.0 reportable accidents per million hours
17.9 fatal accidents per million hours.

gliders (based on BGA statistics):
322.4 reportable accidents per million hours
24.0 fatal accidents per million hours.

So on an hourly basis, gliding in the UK is about twice as dangerous as
GA, but about as dangerous as microlighting (... and don't even think
about a gyro plane!)

However, average flight times for gliders are short (about 13mins -
probably since the majority of training in the UK is done on winch
launches), so accidents per movement is probably a better indicator of
safety -

70.7 reportable accidents per million launches
5.3 fatal accidents per million launches.

I don't have the data for average GA flight duration, but I'd bet it's
rather longer than 13min - even if it's only half an hour, that brings
the accident rate per movement to a comparable level to gliding

Doug

On Jan 25, 8:47*am, Doug Greenwell wrote:

I don't have the data for average GA flight duration, but I'd bet it's
rather longer than 13min - even if it's only half an hour, that brings
the accident rate per movement to a comparable level to gliding

Not sure that's valid unless you know the nature of the GA flight.
That half hour could have one takeoff and one landing or it could have
been spent circuit bashing (performing multiple takeoffs and
landings).

Andy

At 18:23 25 January 2011, Andy wrote:
On Jan 25, 8:47=A0am, Doug Greenwell wrote:

I don't have the data for average GA flight duration, but I'd bet
it's
rather longer than 13min - even if it's only half an hour, that
brings
the accident rate per movement to a comparable level to gliding

Not sure that's valid unless you know the nature of the GA flight.
That half hour could have one takeoff and one landing or it could have
been spent circuit bashing (performing multiple takeoffs and
landings).

Andy

fair point - this is the trouble with comparing accident records of any
sort ... what's a good indicator for one activity doesn't give a clear
picture for another. I guess you'd have to drill down into accident
rates by flight phase - which I'm sure someone somewhere must have done.


Still the odds look pretty good to me ... I have more heart-stoppingly
near-death experiences in one days cycling than in a years flying, and the
proportion of mad b*&%$&s actually trying to kill you is far lower :-)

Doug