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A disturbing statistic
Gary Drescher wrote:
Yup. There've been many threads here on this topic, and (among people who do the research and the arithmetic) the conclusions have been in line with yours. Because the conclusion is correct. Moreover, according to the Nall Report, personal (as opposed to commercial) GA flying has about twice the fatality rate of GA flying overall. In fact, personal flying is the most dangerous segment of GA. Even cropdusting is safer. On the other hand, instructional flight (solo and dual) has about half the fatality rate of GA overall (even though the most dangerous phases of flight--takeoff, landing, and low-altitude maneuvering--are presumably overrepresented in instructional flight). The same is true of self-flown business travel. What that suggests is that flying simple planes, maintaining proficiency, and having conservative standards regarding weather adds up to a fatality rate that is only slightly greater than that of driving. If that were truly the way to go, then self-flown business travel would be far more dangerous than personal flying - the planes are generally faster and more complex, and the pilots generally are under pressure to be there on time and will push weather more. But the reality is very different. So I would suggest that while maintaining proficiency may well be important (those who fly for business tend to fly much more than those who only fly for personal reasons) simple planes and conservative standards buy you little if anything. Let's not kid ourselves - even corporate flying, which features pilots who fly and train a lot more and much better equipment still won't come within a factor of two of automobiles. And here's the real kicker - automobile fatality rates are very unevenly distributed. The teenage kids are way overrepresented, and the middle aged, middle class types are way underrepresented. So what does the typical pilot profile look like? Michael |
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