Hard Deck

On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 9:52:17 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:

Here's a link to some files summarizing Glider Fatal and Non-Fatal Accidents over a 20 year period between 1994 and 2013.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sb...apIOscTfzuk5aY



I've received reports of an inoperative link:

Try this one if you have an interest:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...aY?usp=sharing

Andy Blackburn
9B

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 2:28:59 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Stupid stuff usually does not win contests. Our winners are tremendously talented pilots. Occasional sporting risks are part of the game. One landout, aborted flight through thunderstorm, etc. will lose a contest. So, usually, avoid such problems. But when you have to go, you have to go.

We (Aero Club Albatross - Blairstown, NJ) have had an atrocious record over the last 10 or so years. We've had at least 10 gliders seriously damaged or destroyed over that time period during field landings. None of these was during a contest. Many of them were during ridge flights, but not all. And we've had several that were incredibly close to being accidents. Not a single one was a record flight or had any "points" on the line.

I would submit that the problem isn't a scoring or points problem, but an airmanship problem.

P3

At 00:13 04 February 2018, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 9:52:17 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn
wrote:

Here's a link to some files summarizing Glider Fatal and Non-Fatal
Accidents over a 20 year period between 1994 and 2013.

https://drive.google.com/open?
id=1sbx5LHrvryYyYRU0UnapIOscTfzuk5aY



I've received reports of an inoperative link:

Try this one if you have an interest:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...yYyYRU0UnapIOs
cTfzuk5aY?usp=sharing

Andy Blackburn
9B

Andy, The 4/1/2004 midair at Oso, WA. The Libelle pilot was not
killed. He walked out after a parachute deployment.

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 6:15:06 PM UTC-8, 3j wrote:
At 00:13 04 February 2018, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 9:52:17 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn
wrote:

Here's a link to some files summarizing Glider Fatal and Non-Fatal
Accidents over a 20 year period between 1994 and 2013.

https://drive.google.com/open?
id=1sbx5LHrvryYyYRU0UnapIOscTfzuk5aY



I've received reports of an inoperative link:

Try this one if you have an interest:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...yYyYRU0UnapIOs
cTfzuk5aY?usp=sharing

Andy Blackburn
9B

Andy, The 4/1/2004 midair at Oso, WA. The Libelle pilot was not
killed. He walked out after a parachute deployment.

Thanks - I'm sure he'll be glad to hear that.

I'll go back and check why that came out that way.

Andy

Andy -- Many thanks for this incredibly useful resource--far beyond the current issue too.

"Stall spin" usually means low altitude maneuvering. A stall spin at 5000' doesn't usually result in an accident. And all the ones I have looked at, the stall spin is the last link on a long accident chain involving increasing desperation and very low altitude maneuvering.

John Cochrane.

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 8:24:32 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 6:15:06 PM UTC-8, 3j wrote:
At 00:13 04 February 2018, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 9:52:17 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn
wrote:

Here's a link to some files summarizing Glider Fatal and Non-Fatal
Accidents over a 20 year period between 1994 and 2013.

https://drive.google.com/open?
id=1sbx5LHrvryYyYRU0UnapIOscTfzuk5aY



I've received reports of an inoperative link:

Try this one if you have an interest:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...yYyYRU0UnapIOs
cTfzuk5aY?usp=sharing

Andy Blackburn
9B

Andy, The 4/1/2004 midair at Oso, WA. The Libelle pilot was not
killed. He walked out after a parachute deployment.

Thanks - I'm sure he'll be glad to hear that.

I'll go back and check why that came out that way.

Andy

Apologies, I should have checked first before making a joke. I see now this was the Libelle/DG-400 midair.

The database correctly shows the fatality in the DG, not the Libelle. The way the NTSB tracks these accidents there were two gliders involved in a fatal accident with a single fatality. There are some others, such as the towplane that collided with a Cirrus in Colorado. That one show three aircraft and four fatalities with a glider involved.

9B

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 8:31:44 PM UTC-8, John Cochrane wrote:
Andy -- Many thanks for this incredibly useful resource--far beyond the current issue too.

"Stall spin" usually means low altitude maneuvering. A stall spin at 5000' doesn't usually result in an accident. And all the ones I have looked at, the stall spin is the last link on a long accident chain involving increasing desperation and very low altitude maneuvering.

John Cochrane.

I believe I only count stall/spin when it terminates at the ground. Stall/spin not on TO or LDG almost always is in the mountains. There are a few of those.

Updated the fatal accident database through 2017 for the morbidly analytical.

Andy

Same thing happened to me when I was independently querying the NTSB database a few nights ago. Twice I read fatality reports involving pilots I knew were still around (e.g., KS)! Turns out there were two reports for the midairs, one for each aircraft. The reports, often written by investigators who know little about soaring, are imperfect albeit sobering. And they're searchable by various criteria. And downloadable.

Without mentioning types, I was struck by how often certain gliders seemed to show up. Maybe 9B could do some analysis leading to a "safest gliders to fly" or "safest gliders for lower-time pilots" or "safest gliders to crash" report. Seriously. Many of the data needed are available, not all from the same source, of course: accidents, registrations, hours and ratings of the affected pilots (usually), hours in type, context (contest participation is often mentioned when applicable), contest experience by pilot and by type, pilot ranking at the time, age, etc. I wish the digitized versions went back further (1982 IIRC) but there is still a lot of valuable information.

Chip Bearden

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 1:41:45 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
But it is amazing that when there are points on the table, stupid seems to blossom like mushrooms after a rain. And then vanish the moment we go home and points are off the table.

We've seen all that at wave camp.

I think we have many pilots with an odd, and I would say "defective" sense of risk management, one that says it's okay to stack on a lot more risk when flying for objectives. Encapsulated nicely by the guy you and I both know that says of final glides, in a nearly theatrical manner, "They are SUPPOSED to be dangerous!". The guy that thinks like this (and he has company) is going to find ways to put himself in dangerous situations under performance pressure regardless of rules. The high finish probably has been beneficial to safety... although I can think of three serious crashes just at one contest site that followed 500' or higher finishes.

In our club, we're putting extra effort on risk assessment / risk management, along with a "train like you fight, fight like you train" philosophy towards flying for objectives. I doubt very much that we will transform the sport, but perhaps we can plant some seeds for the future.

Evan Ludeman / T8

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