How safe is it, really?

wrote:

How much time do celebrities spend traveling in GA aircraft vs traveling
in
cars?

Probably a lot more in aircraft (GA or otherwise).

Now I think you're just pulling my leg. You can't be serious.
--
Dan
C-172RG at BFM

wrote:
IMO that's a dangerous attitude to have. An instrument rated pilot who
does
not regularly use the rating cannot be proficient unless he is
exceptionally
committed to regular training. I don't know any pilots who fit that
description. The ones I know who keep the rating "just to get through a
cloud deck" would be in real danger if unexpectedly forced to fly an
approach to minimums.

Agreed. Obviously a person has to practice regularly to keep the skills
sharp. Most of the IA pilots I know of do this, I'm surprised to hear
you say you don't know of any who do.

I was trying to say, perhaps clumsily, that I don't know any i-rated pilots
who seldom use the rating yet at the same time are exceptionally committed
to regular training.

[snip]
while I agree that a person needs to use the rating to stay proficient,
even going through the training, ground work and testing to get it will
make him/her more competent unless they forget everything once they're
done with the checkride.

Which they often do, in my experience. On the occasions when I've flown in
the right seat with a couple of these guys, it's been obvious to me they
were not proficient, even though they were current by the reg's.

I think she is justifiably worried. Look at it from her side: she knows
zip-all about flying aside from what she sees on TV, which is nearly
100%
bad. How would you feel? I think it shows some good sense that she is
at
least willing to research the subject. We don't know her husband; she
does.
She doesn't know flying; we do (well, some of us do). So she has to
weigh
what she reads here against what she thinks about her husband's
judgement.

I concurred in all of my comments that she had justifiable concern. And
yes, it shows good sense *and* an open mind that she was willing to get
and weigh more info. Where did you get the idea I was saying anything
else?

I didn't mean to imply that you did. Not everything I post is an argument!
--
Dan
C-172RG at BFM

"AJW" wrote:
What about you guys? I suspect if your log book has more than a few
hundard
hours you've been in circumstances where your particular die's black face
nearly came up. Was the start of the sequence 'pilot error' or equipment?

In 900+ hours I've had one emergency: a voltage regulator failure in IMC.
Not too scary, really. I had time to notify ATC of my intentions and I used
the portable GPS on the yoke to fly a VOR approach into BFM.
--
Dan
C-172RG at BFM

"Bob Fry" wrote in message
...
"Mike Rapoport" writes:

"Marco Leon" mmleon(at)yahoo.com wrote in message
...
I think what he really meant was that there's no reason (when all is
said
and done) a private pilot can't end up with the same accident record as
an
airline captain.

Marco Leon

That isn't even remotely true.

It's at least remotely true. Look, airline flying is safer because of
better training and better equipment. 2 points for them. But, they
must fly on schedule and therefore in bad weather. The average PP-ASEL
doesn't have the great equipment and training, but *if they choose*,
they can decide when they fly and under what conditions.

So the VFR rated PP can take a cross country trip and be quite safe,
*if they allow for slack time*. If the PP gets into a situation where
they must meet a schedule they are inviting disaster, sooner, or later.

Your analysis is flawed and doesn't represent reality. First, the weather
and schedule risks are already included in the airline data of .012 fatal
accidents per 100K hours. The *total* GA fatal rate (including bizjets over
12,500lb) is 1.36/100k hrs. This is a rate 113 times higher than the
airline rate. The source for both of these is the NTSB.

Second, GA over 12,500lb has an accident rate about 2-3x the airline rate
and flys a significant percentage of the total GA hours. This makes the
"light GA" accident rate higher than the NTSB numbers.

Third, "Personal flying" (light GA excluding business and training)
constitutes 47% of "light GA" flight hours and 72% of fatal accidents so the
"personal flying" accident rate is 50% higher than the overall "light GA"
rate. So, the light GA fatal accident rate is *over* 169 times the airline
rate. I don't have the over 12,500lb hours and accident rates so I can't
demonstrate how much over the 169 times "light GA" but I suspect that it is
another 50% higher (254 times)

Even if you eliminate weather, hostile terrain and "stupid pilot tricks" you
don't eliminate over 99% of light GA fatal accidents.

The bottom line is that personal flying is not even remotely close to
airline flying *under any conditions* in terms of safety.

Mike
MU-2

No, I don't think so. Should I?

Mike
MU-2


"MLenoch" wrote in message
...
Mike
MU-2

Do you know Sandy McAusland?
VL

"Slip'er" wrote in message
news:Kpdrd.190624$hj.182656@fed1read07...

Are you assuming that the 1.3/100k fatal accident rate applies to the
type
of flying that you do?

I'll take that bate. Yes, it is one component of the statistic. The
1.3/100K is an aggregate of all types of GA flying. Divide that into
different categories of flight (mountain flying, bush flying, IMC, Night,
etc: of course being careful that categories don't share population like
my
examples...) and it is very reasonable to hypothesize that the statistics
across types could be very different.

Carl

Exactly. My reason for asking is that pilots seem to think that the
1.3/100K rate represents what they think of as "GA" but it encompasses a lot
of hours of bizjet flying which have a accident rate about 3% of the light
GA rate so the light GA rate is actually much higher. If you then separate
light GA into catagoies you find that personal flying is 50% greater than
the average light GA rate (Nall Report). So personal flying across all
risks (including "stupid pilot tricks") has about twice the fatal accident
rate as the often quoted 1.3/100K.

Mike
MU-2

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...
wrote:
[snip]
while I agree that a person needs to use the rating to stay proficient,
even going through the training, ground work and testing to get it will
make him/her more competent unless they forget everything once they're
done with the checkride.

Which they often do, in my experience. On the occasions when I've flown
in
the right seat with a couple of these guys, it's been obvious to me they
were not proficient, even though they were current by the reg's.


Two of my partners call me once every six months to sit in the right seat
while they fly some approaches and hold on a VOR. Their procedures and radio
work are clumsy but their aircraft control is pretty solid. Neither have
filed an IFR flight plan in probably some years, but if they ended up in IMC
I don't see any reason to think they wouldn't get the plane on the ground at
an airport with their passengers' underwear still clean.

This sort of "survival IFR" probably does not require you to be able to make
an approach down to ILS minimums in a howling storm. The only places close
to me that I can think of where conditions go from MVFR to LIFR that rapidly
are along the atlantic coast where fog can roll in quite rapidly. However,
if you're flying to Nantucket and this happens, you can probably do a 180
and head back inland where it's likely CAVU to the moon. I have a lot more
trust that this sort of pilot will survive the kind of encounters with
weather that can happen when VFR turns into MVFR or MIFR, than one who has
little or no instrument training.

But in the end we cannot really use statistics to guide us, since we can
really only guess at the number of hours flown in IMC versus VMC.

-cwk.

Not even close.

Mike
MU-2


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:XQkrd.186130$R05.52165@attbi_s53...
...Take a 182, fly day VFR only, don't buzz anybody and your
chance of dying is the same as driving...

Gosh, do we *really* need to quantify that statement?

Let's see.... Hmmm.. If we remove needless risk taking, do you think
flying might be safer?

I believe the answer can only be "yes."

Heck, if we remove "running out of gas" and "flying planes that haven't
been maintained properly", personal flying might actually be SAFER than
driving.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Slip'er" wrote in message
news:sldrd.190623$hj.62009@fed1read07...
Unlike a motorcycle, a pilot gets to choose his
level of risk.

LOL, Obviously you do not ride a motorcycle. I race up and down Palomar
Mountain, Ortega Highway, and many other popular Southern California sport
bike roads. Motorcycle riders definitely choose their own level of risk

I like the idea of a motorcycle but I live in Boston and the thought of
riding around here sends chills down my spine. I get nearly run down at
least once a month by soccer moms in SUVs because they don't see my low car
in their blind spot when they change lanes without signaling (one of many
fine local traditions). I'm surprised at how *few* motorcycle fatalities
there are around here. (FYI, I used to work at a local newspaper so I did
see "all the accidents that didn't make the news")

The way I look at it is that in an airplane, it's relatively unlikely that
I'll pay for someone else's mistake. Not impossible, just exceedingly
unlikely. There are very few chains of events leading to a fatal accident in
which an avoidable pilot error does not feature at some point.

I have friends who ride and they have told me about defensive driving and
such, but the fact remains that riding a bike in a populated area, you will
often be surrounded by vehicles capable of turning you into a grease spot.
You can do a lot to protect yourself but there's an infinite number of
possibilities where another driver's screwup will punch your ticket.

-cwk.

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:04:13 GMT, Judah wrote:

Some years back, Audi was sued because
of failures related to their accelerator and brakes that led to fatalities.

My recollection of this was that Audi was found to be blameless in
terms of "unintended acceleration". In every single car tested, no
matter how hard anyone stomped on the accelerator, the brakes held it
in place. In other words, no audi engine could move the car if the
brakes were applied.

So in those vehicals in which the alleged "unintended acceleration"
occured, what actually was happening? The owners were stepping on the
accelerator, not the brake pedal.

How could this be? Like many european cars Audi arranged the brake
and accelerator pedal close together and at the same height so that
the driver could easily transition from one to the other. So there
was not much space between the two. Plus, the wheel well intruded
somewhat so that both pedals were displaced to the right more so than
most american drivers were used to. I know, you'd think that this
would mean that drivers would more likely mistake the brake pedal for
the accelerator but it was cited as a factor.

Many of the car magazines did extensive testing to see if they could
either duplicate the situation or find out why it was happening.

Stepping on the gas when you intended to step on the brakes is
something seniors do all the time, and they aren't often in Audi's.
To them when it's happening, they think they are stepping on the
brake, because that's what they thought they had done. So they cannot
react quickly enough to remove their foot from the gas to the brake
before bad things happen.

Corky Scott