4:1 Ratio of fatal US glider accidents, West vs. East

[Sean F (F2)]

Using the Mississippi river as the dividing line, a new book on US Glider Accidents reveals the following statistics:

Page 124 chart totals...
----------East West Total
Accidents -124 201 326
Fatalities --15 53 68

38 additional fatalities in the Western US over the same period of time. 15 east, 53 west. Wow!, that is an absolutely shocking figure.

Anyone have any idea how the ratio of fatal glider accidents could be nearly 4:1 west vs. east?

Sincerely,

Sean
F2

[[email protected]]

We would need to know total # flights east vs west. Could simply be there are more glider flights in the west.

[Mike the Strike]

On Monday, January 27, 2014 1:08:23 PM UTC-7, wrote:
> We would need to know total # flights east vs west. Could simply be there are more glider flights in the west.

Eastern gliders are still buried under the snow and out west we are flying!

Mike

[[email protected]]

My thunder has been stolen. We fly WAY more out west.

I'm sure the number of hours flown can easily explain the 4:1 ratio.

We do cross county thermal flights in the winter... 'nuf said.

[[email protected]]

Knowing the total number of flights for each population would be important, but as a Western pilot I wonder if this reflects the unforgiving nature of mountain flying? It would be helpful to know what kinds of accident these numbers are describing (collision with terrain, for example).

Suggestion for an additional way to look at this data, how many of these Western fatalities involved Eastern pilots flying in unfamiliar, unforgiving terrain?

Chris Young

[Ramy]

On Monday, January 27, 2014 3:48:32 PM UTC-8, JS wrote:
> There's a lot of winter boredom where it's cold?
>
> Tehee!
>
> Jim

I believe this subject came up before. You can use OLC to compare number of hours, flights, kms flown east vs west and you will find similar ratio which explains the difference. The soaring season never ends in the west. Another factor could indeed be the less forgiving terrain we often fly over in the west.
I am pretty sure this has nothing to do with quality of instructions as I recall a prominent instructor claims.

Ramy (who just had over 3 hours XC flight last weekend in the west)

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

Ramy wrote, On 1/27/2014 10:10 PM:
> The soaring season never ends in the west.

If only it were true! You should say "southwest", 'cause the soaring
pretty much ends between November through February here in the Northwest
(Washington, Oregon, Idaho).

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)

[bumper[_4_]]

On Monday, January 27, 2014 10:17:48 PM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
the soaring
>
> pretty much ends between November through February here in the Northwest
>
> (Washington, Oregon, Idaho).
> --
>
> Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

Move to Minden and quit complaining!

We don't have anyone quite like you down here yet and your eccentric enough that you'd fit in nicely :c)!

bumper
QV & MKIV

[[email protected]]

On Monday, January 27, 2014 10:41:36 PM UTC-8, bumper wrote:

All - Here is a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet with fatal accident (tabs for summary as well as details). Each is categorized by phase of flight and type of accident - these are my interpretation from the NTSB reports. If there were multiple categories I went with the initiating cause (e.g. loss of control leading to structural breakup - there are several of these). The report IDs are included in the detail so you can look each one up. It is for the past 20 years (1994-2013 calendar years). There is a tab for ALL glider midairs similarly classified as well as type of flight.

I focused of fatal accidents since West showed a greater discrepancy here with more than twice the lethality of accidents in the East. The summary shows that much of the difference between West and East seems to be consistent with the more extreme flying in the west - there are a lot more accidents associated with in-flight stall/spin, flight into terrain and loss of control in all flight phases.

I have the FAA registration database sorted by state as well as OLC flights for 2013 by SSA region so I should be able to come up with some indicators of whether these higher accident numbers are associated with larger numbers of gliders or glider (OLC) flights in the west versus east.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag1ChKkWEYLNdFpweVMyY3U2a2RBZHFOUVlYTWI1Z mc&usp=sharing

[[email protected]]

On Monday, January 27, 2014 11:17:40 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> On Monday, January 27, 2014 10:41:36 PM UTC-8, bumper wrote:

Total gliders registered by state (current, valid registrations) - East versus West of the Mississippi:

West 2523
East 1922

West is 31% higher than east so if the total hours or flights flown per year per glider is the same you'd expect about 31% more accidents in the West - everything else being equal.

(Note: FAA estimates that only 62% of the fleet is "active" and a casual scan shows some gliders with current registrations are registered to museums so clearly not all gliders are flying a lot - there is no FAA information to indicate if amount of flying per glider is different in the East vs the West).

Of the 3831 gliders with current registrations and a manufacturing date recorded the median age is 36 years old. Around 1000 gliders in the US are 20 years old or younger.

Now on to OLC.

9B

[[email protected]]

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 12:39:18 AM UTC-8, wrote:
> Now on to OLC.

US 2013 (Calendar Year) OLC Summary - East (Regions 1-6) vs West (Regions 7-12);

Flights km Avg km/flt
East 4,120 689,778 167
West 8,618 2,346,437 272
W % higher 109% 240% 63%

West posted more than twice as many flights and more than three and a half times as many km. This of course doesn't account for all the various flying that is not posted to OLC, but it is one indicator of total activity. 993 US pilots posted to OLC in the US (an average of 13 flights each), launching from a total of 264 different airports.

Lastly, of the 852 club and commercial gliders and towplanes listed under the SSA's "Where to Fly" tool across 178 locations, 398 are located in the East and 454 are located in the West (14% more).

These 852 club ships plus the 993 (assuming most of them have their own gliders) roughly correspond to the nearly 2000 gliders in the US the FAA estimates are "active" (not sure how they define or estimate it).

If you simply assume half the flight go to OLC gliders and half go to club gliders (and the club equipment flies about the same amount each) you end up with about 62% more flying in the west than the east - not sure if it's better to use flights or hours, miles, etc. - kind of depends on whether you are looking at takeoff, landing or inflight accidents. Allowing for the longer distances flown out west it kind of makes sense that there are proportionately more inflight accidents in the mix since the number of miles/hours per takeoff apparently are higher.

We are still left with the higher fatality of western accidents. That would seem to be primarily a function of conditions since the landing stall/spin accident rate (the number one single cause of fatal accidents and perhaps the most comparable phase of flight in the east vs west) is pretty comparable, or slightly lower in the west.

Enough torturing the data for one evening.

9B

[[email protected]]

Andy:

While you're busy torturing data...

Aside from overall numbers -- where we are missing the relevant denominators -- the interesting thing is that the ratio of fatal to nonfatal accidents is higher in the West.

In part this may be that the East, per hour, has more nonfatal accidents. We fly (especially in contests) in atrocious weather; atrocious weather produces landouts, about 1/10 to 1/20 landouts produces damage, though rarely pilot injury. Fly in booming conditions, don't land out, and you will have fewer incidents -- and a larger ratio of fatal accidents.

Of course, it could be the opposite. Everything else is the same, but the west has mountains to fly in to.

I would be curious to know what fraction of accidents are happening in local operations vs. cross country.

Cross country flying is quite different in the two areas. There is much less reason I can think of that local operations should be more accident prone west vs. east.

I would speculate that most of these accidents are not happening on cross country, contest, or OLC flights at all, so all those discussions are irrelevant If most of these accidents are happening in local operations, then we really have a quite different story to tell.

John Cochrane

[[email protected]]

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 7:23:24 AM UTC-8, wrote:
> Andy:
> While you're busy torturing data...
> Aside from overall numbers -- where we are missing the relevant denominators -- the interesting thing is that the ratio of fatal to nonfatal accidents is higher in the West.
>
> In part this may be that the East, per hour, has more nonfatal accidents. We fly (especially in contests) in atrocious weather; atrocious weather produces landouts, about 1/10 to 1/20 landouts produces damage, though rarely pilot injury. Fly in booming conditions, don't land out, and you will have fewer incidents -- and a larger ratio of fatal accidents.
>
> Of course, it could be the opposite. Everything else is the same, but the west has mountains to fly in to.
>
> I would be curious to know what fraction of accidents are happening in local operations vs. cross country.
>
> Cross country flying is quite different in the two areas. There is much less reason I can think of that local operations should be more accident prone west vs. east.
>
> I would speculate that most of these accidents are not happening on cross country, contest, or OLC flights at all, so all those discussions are irrelevant If most of these accidents are happening in local operations, then we really have a quite different story to tell.
>
> John Cochrane

More torture. Yes, the denominators are hard to estimate.

I had the fatal accidents handy. There are about 10 times as many accidents and NTSB doesn't capture all of the accidents where there isn't a fatality..

Just scanning through what I have - most of the in-flight accidents are XC/contest. Most of the landings are local. Obviously all the takeoff accidents are local. Most of the assembly/config and incapacitation are local.

Without dipping into the details, I would estimate that 20-25% of the Eastern fatal accidents are away from the airport. For the West this number is more like 30-35% - driven almost entirely by stall/spin, loss of control and flight into terrain, most of that in the mountains. A good number friends of mine. The other stats are slightly lower in the West.

I was surprised at the overall activity and fleet proportions - especially given my perception that there are more contests flow in the east - but I need to look into that.

9B

[[email protected]]

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 8:49:39 AM UTC-8, wrote:

Oh, and midairs (fatal and non-fatal) were 15% landing, 45% local (in one case not clear how close, but seemingly on the local ridge), 40% contests away from the airport.

9B

[Sean F (F2)]

Very cool of you to spin up this spreadsheet Andy. I suppose it all makes sense in the end. Flying in the mountains is slightly to moderately more dangerous than flying in weak weather.

Sean

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 12:08:27 PM UTC-5, wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 8:49:39 AM UTC-8, wrote:
>
>
>
> Oh, and midairs (fatal and non-fatal) were 15% landing, 45% local (in one case not clear how close, but seemingly on the local ridge), 40% contests away from the airport.
>
>
>
> 9B

[Casey Cox]

I don't mean to highjack the thread about East vs West, which btw I do think is interesting, but I am astounded by the number of fatalities in the past 20 yrs. I'm also surprised at the number is almost equal for the first 10 yrs and the second 10. Also the number of 2 place gliders involved seems to be high to me.

[[email protected]]

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 7:17:05 PM UTC-5, Casey Cox wrote:
I am astounded by the number of fatalities in the past 20 yrs.

A few years ago, I did a search to find the most dangerous common activities. Underground coal mining was the worst. Flying gliders is even worse.

The most amazing thing for me to try to understand is who we are. Well to do, educated, the movers and shakers.

OTOH, I am convinced, the primary problem is a fundamental lack of knowledge, and an unwillingness to make the effort to learn.

Today I started a thread on my newsletter to try to help. Sign up free at www.eglider.org if you are interested.

Tom Knauff

[[email protected]]

I created something a while ago which might be of interest to this thread:

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1OH9CKfUwjWKqhCTLWOK-H3ZEXgvXvIAKjj_Qb9A

I got the data from the NTSB (searching on aircraft type glider). There are a few errors in the data, e.g. accidents in the middle of the Atlantic because the NTSB has the wrong latitude/longitude.

If there is enough interest, I could update the map with a different time range, and add tweaks like links to the full reports on the NTSB site. This was literally a 15 minute effort (I work for a Google competitor in the mapping industry, so I wanted to see how Google's APIs worked :-)).

Hope it helps the discussion!

Cheers,
-Mark

[[email protected]]

(Forgot to mention that the "Map of Latitude" tab is the interesting tab on my document... the spreadsheet posted earlier in this thread has the same or more raw data)

Cheers,
-Mark

[[email protected]]

Pretty cool - would be interesting to split the fatal from non-fatal - and maybe other attributes.

[[email protected]]

On Thursday, January 30, 2014 1:08:06 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> Pretty cool - would be interesting to split the fatal from non-fatal - and maybe other attributes.

If you go over to the "Map of Latitude" tab, you can set up filters on any of the fields... Click the blue "Filter" box, then "Injury Severity", and you can just select for fatal-vs.-nonfatal. Or you could filter on a range of Longitudes to see the East/West split. I'm a maps geek, so I always like my data to have a visual component :).

Cheers,
-Mark

[son_of_flubber]

On Thursday, January 30, 2014 5:37:42 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> I'm a maps geek, so I always like my data to have a visual component :).

Yep. And it can get interesting when you add additional layers of data.

If you're in the mood and someone comes forward with the data set, it would be interesting to add the "annual number of aerotows per location". There is bound to be some interesting anomalies (places with lots of tows and no accidents).

There was a discussion last year of the aerotow count survey on RAS, but I could not find it by searching. It would be interesting even if the data set were only available for a year or two if that caveat were prominently noted.

[[email protected]]

About a decade ago I searched through the NTSB database looking for all accidents that said "contest" "race" or "meet" to get a sense of what the problems with contest soaring are. The results are here

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/soaring/ppts/contest_safety.ppt

I've been too lazy to update it, but if anyone is playing with the data a similar search would be useful. As others have mentioned, not all accidents get reported.

John Cochrane

[Soartech]

>
> A few years ago, I did a search to find the most dangerous common activities. Underground coal mining was the worst. Flying gliders is even worse.
>
>
>
> The most amazing thing for me to try to understand is who we are. Well to do, educated, the movers and shakers.
>

Even more revealing would be to show the number of fatalities for CFIG, club presidents, etc. Many are high hour, experienced pilots.
THAT is what scares me! I don't get it.