How safe is it, really?

How can you say that you "never put then in harms way" or that you "never
fly in dangerous conditions". You have no idea of whether you are doing
these things or not. I am not trying to say that you are crazy or
ignorant, I just would like to know how you can rationalize those
statements with reality.

I've taken my kids hiking in the Grand Canyon (no hand rails!), swimming in
the ocean (sharks!), spelunking in underground caverns (cave-ins), bike
riding on trails (broken neck!), and motorcycling across the country (crazy
drivers trying to kill us!).

During each one of these activities, I've been acutely aware of the high
risks involved.

I've also taken them flying since before they could walk, and have never
felt that I was needlessly endangering them.

Were my kids safer in the ocean? Everything comes down to risk assessment.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Dan Thompson" wrote in message
. com...
I've read the Nall report.

You're missing my point. My point is, the way *I* fly, in *my* plane, is
safer than *my* drive to *my* airport, which is my main concern and the
only
thing I can directly influence.

Isn't it possible I could be right? Do you agree that some kinds of GA
flying are safer than some kinds of automobile driving?

You are kidding yourself and have painted a safety picture of yourself that
is not true.
If you fly personal GA you are much more likely to die in the airplane than
the drive to the airport.

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...

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


My thoughts exactly.

Jay Honeck wrote:

...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.

But most VFR only pilots fly this way. Don't buzz anybody, don't fly at
night and stay out of the clouds is a recipe for staying alive. Does
that not describe your flying?

"Jay Honeck"

We watch the weather closely, and carefully pick our times to fly. We
ALWAYS refuel after every flight, so that we always have full tanks.
Since we can fly non-stop for over 5 hours, this pretty much eliminates
the "running out of gas" scenario.

I don't know why more pilots don't do this. I've been in a few tricky
situations and it's always been a comforting feeling not to have to even
*think* about fuel. In marginal or potentially challenging weather, my
reserve is more like two hours than the required. But I often see pilots
flying with "just enough" when they don't have to.

We don't "buzz" anyone, we don't overload the aircraft, and we don't fly
when the weather sucks. Our one concession to safety (we also have two
kids, both of whom have flown since they were tots) is that we no longer
fly at night.

Time for that turbine twin...

moo

"Mike Rapoport" writes:

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

Huh? You mean the above factors account for less than 1% of GA fatal
accidents?? Not a chance. What's causing all the fatalities then?

"Mike Rapoport" writes:

So the bottom line here is that the accident rate for personal flying is
about twice the figure that pilots like to start with!

OK, let's say that's true.

You still don't address our basic premise, which is that

1. A large fraction of the total Personal Flying accident rate is
composed of pilot-controllable causes: flying into marginal weather,
buzzing, etc.

2. The poster's hubby, if he's a careful fellow, can reduce that
fraction of accidents and thus be pretty safe--perhaps approaching
ground vehicle safety, perhaps not, but certainly reducing his
personal accident rate below the average rate, whatever it is.

I still would say that one's personal flying accident rate is probably
going to be higher than one's personal driving accident rate, but it
need not conform to average statistical rates, because flying
accidents are more preventable than driving accidents.

"Stefan" wrote in message
...
Mike Rapoport wrote:

This has been an interesting thread! My main interest has been watching
pilots take one set of statistics that show what they want to see, and
then to rationalize that they are safer yet! We see people using the
fatal accident rate for GA
...

I think this whole statistics discussion is irrelevant, even dangerous.

Imagine a young beginning student pilot. If all those experienced pilots
keep telling him that this or that activity (insert your favorite) is more
dangerous than flying, what attitude will he develop?

Instead, keep hammering in his (and your!) head that flying is extremely
dangerous (which it really is). The only way to survive flying is knowing
the risks and being dead serious about it, each time, always, no
exceptions. A side effect of this attitude will be that the statistics
will go down and flying will *appear* to be less dangerous.

Stefan

I agree and have always tried to have a realistic assesment of risk in
whatever I do so that I can make an informed descision about whether the
activity is worth doing. I see no point in downplaying the risks and,
frankly, I'd view anybody whom I could convince that flying with me was as
safe as flying on an airliner to be a total idiot. I am considering some
climbing in the Himalaya and the fatal rate is about 4-5% per trip. There
is no point in thinking these stats don't apply to me because "I won't do
anything stupid" since everyone else who perished thought the same thing.

Last month, I invited a friend to fly to Moose Creek to go fishing. He
asked if flying in the Helio was "safe". I said: "Not really, we will be
flying a single engine airplane over mountains with nowhere to land if the
engine quits. We would probably survive the crash since the airplane is so
slow. Do you want to go or not?" He showed up at the hanger with camping
gear for a week which was an appropriate thing to do.

Mike
MU-2

"Nathan Young" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:01:51 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:


"Peronal Flying" (from Nall Report)
Hours 47% of light GA
Fatal Accidents 72% of light GA
Fatal Rate: 2.65/100,000hrs.

I was curious how this number matches with driving, and on a per miles
basis. I didn't see any statistics for automobile accidents on the
NTSB website, but I found a website that listed the deaths per
vehicle-km.
http://www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen...glish/we2.html

Guesstimating that the average GA plane flies 140mph.
Fatal accident rate = 2.65 / 14M miles -or- 1 fatal accident per 5.3M
miles

The webpage above lists 9.4people killed per billion vehicle-kms.
Converting to miles yields: 9.4 per 625M miles -or- 1 per 41M miles.

Since the car statistics are 'people' killed per mile, and not fatal
accident numbers per mile, the car numbers are actually better than 1
fatal accident per 41M miles. Since most vehicles are operated solo,
the factor is probably 2, but is obviously higher than 1.

-Nathan


This seems about right. If it is about 5x on a distance basis it is about
15x on a time basis. The numbers could be off by quite a bit and personal
flying would still be significantly more dangerous than driving and vastly
more dangerous than airline flying.

Mike
MU-2

"Dave Stadt" wrote in message
. com...


You are kidding yourself and have painted a safety picture of yourself
that
is not true.
If you fly personal GA you are much more likely to die in the airplane
than
the drive to the airport.

That does it!!! I'm turning in my license and buying a VW Microbus!!
--
Matt
---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO