Put your money where the risk is

On Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 9:05:37 AM UTC-5, RR wrote:
Tom,this is why I asked for your definition of airmanship. If it is both stick and rudder skills and judgment then all that is left is mechanical failure and hand of god. It makes sence to me that the last two are small contributors. If we asume our skills are superior and will keep us out of trouble, how do we explain the "**** poor airmanship" of highly skilled contest pilots how have been killed. To me is seems to be erosion of margins. Over time we get more bold, get away with it time and time again until it becomes the new normal. In my effort to keep from being a stistic, I try to reset my margins from time to time.

I have known 3 pilots that have hit trees on the ridge. All resulted in minor damage and flew on. 2 of the 3 were excellent pilots, one a world record holder. All fly a little higher off the ridge now. And without hitting a tree, so do I...

Not about Soaring but relevant safety talk to RR's point of resetting normal margins. Language NSFW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O-Dpw0Yfc&t=674s

Tom, indeed the curious ones in which we don’t understand how those accidents could have happen to experience pilots are the ones I referred to.
I don’t think you can call those poor airmanship. I think many accidents are due to “momentarily laps of judgment� due to “tunnel vision� which is a human flaw and not necessarily poor airmanship. I am afraid we will continue having similar accidents statistics no matter what we do since we are humans participating in an unforgiving activity.

Ramy

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 2:39:57 AM UTC-5, Ramy wrote:
Tom, indeed the curious ones in which we don’t understand how those accidents could have happen to experience pilots are the ones I referred to.
I don’t think you can call those poor airmanship. I think many accidents are due to “momentarily laps of judgment� due to “tunnel vision� which is a human flaw and not necessarily poor airmanship. I am afraid we will continue having similar accidents statistics no matter what we do since we are humans participating in an unforgiving activity.

Ramy

What about tunnel vision or "momentary lapses of judgement" isn't poor airmanship?

T8

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 8:07:07 AM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
What about tunnel vision or "momentary lapses of judgement" isn't poor airmanship?

Only someone else would exhibit "Poor Airmanship".
"A momentary lapse" or "Tunnel vision", not so much...

Be careful out there,
Best Regards, Dave

I'm with Eric.

"Poor airmanship" can pretty nearly be defined as being the PIC of an airplane that crashes - which isn't super helpful. The question I ask myself is: are any of us such great pilots with such impeccable airmanship that we are practically immune from accident - or even at significantly lower risk? We all like to tell ourselves we are good enough pilots not to make a fatal error but obviously some of us end up dead wrong.

I pretty regularly hear assessments of poor flying or poor decision-making following accidents of all kinds, but particularly those with fatalities. Since these accidents are only in the rarest of instances associated with pilots about whom I've also heard "that guy is going to kill himself one day" I can only conclude that we are terrible at predicting who suffers from chronic "poor airmanship" of sufficient severity to kill themself - and we are particularly bad at predicting this for ourselves the ones who end up dead wouldn't fly. So we tend to rationalize about accidents and how we wouldn't do such stupid things and it was all oh so easy to avoid. If hindsight is 20/20, hindsight about someone else's accident is 20/10.

Do I think accidents are totally random and there's nothing that any of us can do about it? No. I wouldn't get in the cockpit, close the canopy and launch if that were the case. But, I do believe there are a significant number of cases where circumstances overwhelm what 99.9 times out of 100 would be an uneventful flight or flying maneuver.

Yes, if you never thermal below 1,500' AGL, never get out of 25:1 gliding range of an airport, never fly slower than 65 knots and never bank more than 30 degrees you might reduce your risk, but not to zero by any stretch and you will likely sacrifice other flying goals in the process, so you shave a little bit here or there while still trying to be careful and safe. Then you end up is a situation where the options aren't what you'd prefer and you have to choose (simple one - land at this airport and call for a retrieve or head to that cu and risk a field landing but if it works you get the altitude you need to get home). So you choose and things can get better or they can get worse. Then you choose again, and again.

We like to think there are absolute limits and rules we can fly by to stay safe, but those are all built on a presumption of predictability - and prediction is a probabilistic exercise. Rule and procedures take you only so far. We all choose where in the probability distribution we think we are flying, but we don't really know because our accumulated experience is insufficient to know exactly where 100% safe is - and if you fly enough you only need to find the 0.01% likely really bad outcome. I know a number of highly skilled pilots with excellent airmanship who through a series of decisions that had unexpected outcomes found the 0.01% - a sequence of events that ultimately exceeded their abundant airmanship skills - in some cases only for a fraction of a distracted moment.

If everything were simple and predictable and seemingly low risk decisions didn't occasionally tend to compound in the worst possible ways, we could all just take a training flight, learn the secret of flawless airmanship and accidents would mostly be a thing of a past. I think we all know it's not so simple, which is why so many of us hunger to learn precisely what happened in each accident - what accumulation of tolerances in the wrong direction cost someone their glider or their life - so we can get a better sense of where the 0.01% is.

Andy Blackburn
9B


On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:16:46 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
I think "poor airmanship" is such a broad term, it tells us nothing useful.
Perhaps the term "pilot error" is more specific and useful, particularly when
talking about pilots that clearly are good airman, yet have an accident. It gives
you a specific reason that you can avoid or learn to control. I think Ramy is
pointing out what we all know: all pilots make errors, and it is the margins we
use that determine the consequences of the error.

Somewhere near the start of this thread, it was posited that margins can erode
over time for a number reasons, and previously safe pilot becomes, unknowingly, an
unsafe pilot.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

On Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 11:39:57 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
Tom, indeed the curious ones in which we don’t understand how those accidents could have happen to experience pilots are the ones I referred to.
I don’t think you can call those poor airmanship. I think many accidents are due to “momentarily laps of judgment� due to “tunnel vision� which is a human flaw and not necessarily poor airmanship. I am afraid we will continue having similar accidents statistics no matter what we do since we are humans participating in an unforgiving activity.

Ramy

Ramy,

If you don't understand how they happened then you can't say what WASN'T involved. Nonetheless, the majority of the accidents were poor airmanship - the others MIGHT have been, we just don't know either way.

Tom

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:16:46 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Dave Nadler wrote on 11/27/2019 6:16 AM:
On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 8:07:07 AM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
What about tunnel vision or "momentary lapses of judgement" isn't poor airmanship?

Only someone else would exhibit "Poor Airmanship".
"A momentary lapse" or "Tunnel vision", not so much...

Be careful out there,
Best Regards, Dave

I think "poor airmanship" is such a broad term, it tells us nothing useful.
Perhaps the term "pilot error" is more specific and useful, particularly when
talking about pilots that clearly are good airman, yet have an accident. It gives
you a specific reason that you can avoid or learn to control. I think Ramy is
pointing out what we all know: all pilots make errors, and it is the margins we
use that determine the consequences of the error.

Somewhere near the start of this thread, it was posited that margins can erode
over time for a number reasons, and previously safe pilot becomes, unknowingly, an
unsafe pilot.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

"Pilot error" simply refers to the pilotage portion of airmanship. The whole idea of quoting statistics is to imply that these events are random and out of your control, which couldn't be further from the truth. My advice is if you apply good airmanship you are unlikely to become one of these statistics. For example, there IS NO reason for anyone to stall/spin turning final. This is good news.

Tom

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 1:24:23 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
I'm with Eric.

"Poor airmanship" can pretty nearly be defined as being the PIC of an airplane that crashes - which isn't super helpful. The question I ask myself is: are any of us such great pilots with such impeccable airmanship that we are practically immune from accident - or even at significantly lower risk? We all like to tell ourselves we are good enough pilots not to make a fatal error but obviously some of us end up dead wrong.

I pretty regularly hear assessments of poor flying or poor decision-making following accidents of all kinds, but particularly those with fatalities. Since these accidents are only in the rarest of instances associated with pilots about whom I've also heard "that guy is going to kill himself one day" I can only conclude that we are terrible at predicting who suffers from chronic "poor airmanship" of sufficient severity to kill themself - and we are particularly bad at predicting this for ourselves the ones who end up dead wouldn't fly. So we tend to rationalize about accidents and how we wouldn't do such stupid things and it was all oh so easy to avoid. If hindsight is 20/20, hindsight about someone else's accident is 20/10.

Do I think accidents are totally random and there's nothing that any of us can do about it? No. I wouldn't get in the cockpit, close the canopy and launch if that were the case. But, I do believe there are a significant number of cases where circumstances overwhelm what 99.9 times out of 100 would be an uneventful flight or flying maneuver.

Yes, if you never thermal below 1,500' AGL, never get out of 25:1 gliding range of an airport, never fly slower than 65 knots and never bank more than 30 degrees you might reduce your risk, but not to zero by any stretch and you will likely sacrifice other flying goals in the process, so you shave a little bit here or there while still trying to be careful and safe. Then you end up is a situation where the options aren't what you'd prefer and you have to choose (simple one - land at this airport and call for a retrieve or head to that cu and risk a field landing but if it works you get the altitude you need to get home). So you choose and things can get better or they can get worse. Then you choose again, and again.

We like to think there are absolute limits and rules we can fly by to stay safe, but those are all built on a presumption of predictability - and prediction is a probabilistic exercise. Rule and procedures take you only so far. We all choose where in the probability distribution we think we are flying, but we don't really know because our accumulated experience is insufficient to know exactly where 100% safe is - and if you fly enough you only need to find the 0.01% likely really bad outcome. I know a number of highly skilled pilots with excellent airmanship who through a series of decisions that had unexpected outcomes found the 0.01% - a sequence of events that ultimately exceeded their abundant airmanship skills - in some cases only for a fraction of a distracted moment.

If everything were simple and predictable and seemingly low risk decisions didn't occasionally tend to compound in the worst possible ways, we could all just take a training flight, learn the secret of flawless airmanship and accidents would mostly be a thing of a past. I think we all know it's not so simple, which is why so many of us hunger to learn precisely what happened in each accident - what accumulation of tolerances in the wrong direction cost someone their glider or their life - so we can get a better sense of where the 0.01% is.

Andy Blackburn
9B


On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:16:46 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
I think "poor airmanship" is such a broad term, it tells us nothing useful.
Perhaps the term "pilot error" is more specific and useful, particularly when
talking about pilots that clearly are good airman, yet have an accident.. It gives
you a specific reason that you can avoid or learn to control. I think Ramy is
pointing out what we all know: all pilots make errors, and it is the margins we
use that determine the consequences of the error.

Somewhere near the start of this thread, it was posited that margins can erode
over time for a number reasons, and previously safe pilot becomes, unknowingly, an
unsafe pilot.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

Andy,

I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.

Tom

I wonder if wing suit pilots try to convince themselves that their excellent airmanship skills will keep them alive as contrasted to their careless deceased companions.
Not equivalent risks, I know, but you get the point.
Objective data are seldom available for fatal accidents leaving us free to put our own spin on the probable causes. Like many high time racing and cross country pilots , l have lost upwards of 20 friends or acquaintances to glider accidents. I can think of only 2 that I suspected the pilot involved was “ an accident waiting to happen�.
One death for every 50,000 hours is an acceptable risk for me.
I try to be careful and current but I think I’m mostly lucky.
Dale Bush

Andy said exactly what I mean and summarized my thought on the subject better than I can. There is nothing I can add to what Andy said to better explain my philosophy of why and how accidents happen.

Ramy