Hard Deck

Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 10:49:36 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane

When ACA decided "enough is enough" with the stupid ****, we got together and started to rethink safety from all angles. We looked at every single accident and near accident/incident across multiple dimensions (pilot experience, weather, terrain, etc.) As mentioned upstream, one of our single biggest findings was that too many pilots are cavalier about XC flight and outlandings, especially in areas of challenging terrain. Another obvious issue was guys flying in really challenging weather (which often comes along with good/great ridge days).

We're making strides in education, club guidelines, etc. But one thing I can see as an instructor is that the US does a LOT less in terms of formal XC training than what I've seen flying at clubs in Europe. For example, you can be a CFI-G in the US never having been outside gliding range of the home field. In the UK, at least Basic and Full instructors have to have a Silver badge (which is still fairly minimal, but at least it's something).

Again - as mentioned up thread - I really think it's a mistake that we don't think more about experience-level competition rather than glider class. What's perfectly safe for someone with decades of competition experience across a wide range of conditions may not be at all safe for someone who just got his Silver badge two weeks before the comp. Adjusting tasking and task parameters to be a bit more conservative for the newbies won't make it any less fun.

And to ND's comment above - it's one thing to take someone with a gold badge and 20 significant XC flights under his/her belt and put them up against a Category 1 pilot. But putting a 50 hour pilot with a freshly minted Silver into the mix is a recipe for disaster IMO.

I see a lot of invalid comparisons in this discussion.Â* How many
airliners or GA aircraft/pilots run ridges, fly mountain wave, etc.?Â*
And to say that, since only one crash occurred at a contest with a 500'
finish limit, makes that safer is ludicrous.Â* In the example stated
there were only 3 crashes total!Â* Anyone with a basic knowledge of
probability would not make any assumption based on a set of three
occurrences.

After 200 odd replies to this thread (is that some sort of record?),
nothing has been settled.Â* What a waste of time.

On 2/4/2018 8:49 AM, John Cochrane wrote:
Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane

--
Dan, 5J

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 8:21:06 AM UTC-8, Dan Marotta wrote:
Anyone with a basic knowledge of
probability would not make any assumption based on a set of three
occurrences.


The most important part of any statistical analysis in making sure you're picking the right data to analyze, and that it's representative of the things you're trying to measure. Rare, catastrophic events are easy to misunderstand or rationalize. You can't go at them assuming you know the answer already or you will most likely end up with the wrong analysis and/or wrong conclusion. Glider pilots seem to be particularly prone to that - sometimes right but never uncertain!

Andy Blackburn
9B

You can't fly a glider the way airlines fly. Airline pilots flying general aviation aircraft on their days off have the same accident rate as nonairline pilots. I'm not defending ****ty flying, just pointing out that the airline model is not applicable outside of the airlines. From being around the reckless fringes of aviation I think the only method that improves safety is mockery and social shame. Don't help pilots hide their stupid, instead openly mock poor piloting decisions. Safety through bullying. Yes it is unpleasant, that is why it works.
On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 10:49:36 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane

Good points. I've noticed a few airline pilots among the particularly, er, bold contest pilots; one or two in the crash statistics including (sadly) an airline safety check pilot glider fatality, involving very low and late decisionmaking about a landout; and I have seen airline pilots particularly vocal (to the point of yelling at me using profanity) about ideas like high finish gates and hard decks, ideas they fly by every day of their working lives. Of course, I know some other airline pilots in the glider community who are absolute models of how to fly fast, efficiently, proficiently, and safely. So bottom line, there is no obvious correlation. An interesting perspective for the proposition that more education will help.

Another aspect is planning. As someone said earlier in the thread, we head off cross country with very little planning. I am particularly guilty of this, often showing up at a race with very little time spent even considering the area to be flown.

Imagine if airlines had to thermal to get from place to place. Surely every single landable field along the way would be marked, studied, in a little booklet (now computer), and you would fly "airport to airport" with conservative numerical minimums. The idea that the pilot would just look out the window, commit to his course while still far away, then find and evaluate fields from the air would be laughed at. (A paradox of our immense high performance gliders is that you really cannot evaluate your landing options from the air. At 10k AGL out west especially, your landing option can be 50 miles away, over a hill and up a valley!)

If only there were 100,000 of us, this kind of investment would be worth it..

John Cochrane

On 2/4/2018 5:16 PM, John Cochrane wrote:
snip

Imagine if airlines had to thermal to get from place to place.
snip
John Cochrane
Imagine the cleanup crews required to remove the vomit from the
cabins... :-D
--
Dan, 5J

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 12:54:03 PM UTC-5, wrote:
You can't fly a glider the way airlines fly. Airline pilots flying general aviation aircraft on their days off have the same accident rate as nonairline pilots. I'm not defending ****ty flying, just pointing out that the airline model is not applicable outside of the airlines. From being around the reckless fringes of aviation I think the only method that improves safety is mockery and social shame. Don't help pilots hide their stupid, instead openly mock poor piloting decisions. Safety through bullying. Yes it is unpleasant, that is why it works.

Maybe a feature of each pilots meeting could be an evaluation of the previous day's landouts (ideally with a projector). I gotta think some of my patterns would've been better if I knew everyone would be analyzing it the next day. We could even hand out gold stars.

You can't fly a glider the way airlines fly. Airline pilots flying
general aviation aircraft on their days off have the same accident rate
as nonairline pilots. I'm not defending ****ty flying, just pointing out
that the airline model is not applicable outside of the airlines. From
being around the reckless fringes of aviation I think the only method
that improves safety is mockery and social shame. Don't help pilots hide
their stupid, instead openly mock poor piloting decisions. Safety
through bullying. Yes it is unpleasant, that is why it works.

Maybe a feature of each pilots meeting could be an evaluation of the
previous day's landouts (ideally with a projector). I gotta think some of
my patterns would've been better if I knew everyone would be analyzing it
the next day. We could even hand out gold stars.

"Safety through bullying"...haw! (IMO, on-target peer pressure ain't bullying.)

Semantics aside, peer pressure and Darwinism - damn powerful forces!
Resistance is futile!!!

Bob W.

---
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On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 10:49:36 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
"what a bozo, I wouldn't do that."

Right. What you'll be doing on the way to your next wgc. Hope they don't stick you with a direct finish.

T8