(Ben Jackson) writes:

This whole thread is nuts. There are many levels of safety, and
people have to choose between them all the time. Why can't people
who have decided not to install an autopilot just admit that they
have chosen a slightly lower level of safety?

That's not a fair assessment of the thread. A couple of extreme
positions crept in -- (a) an autopilot does no good, (b) IFR without
an autopilot is unacceptably dangerous -- but most of the postings in
this thread are exploring the ground in the middle. I mentioned right
at the start that I would love a wing-leveller some day, just to have
a panic button available if I ever get severe vertigo.

The hard part is figuring out how big the risk is, and we simply don't
have the stats available to do that. The people who *do* have the
stats -- insurance companies -- do not give a discount for private IFR
pilots flying small planes with an autopilot (as far as I've seen), so
they must figure it's too small a risk difference to affect the amount
of claims they pay out.

The question is not whether an A/P provides additional safety, but how
much additional safety it provides. For example, does it provide more
additional safety than wearing your shoulder belt? Almost certainly
not. Does it provide more additional safety than carrying a gun on
board? Probably (unless you're flying in polar bear country). Does
it provide more additional safety than wearing a flame-retardant suit
or a full survival suit? I don't know.

Sometimes things that look good on paper don't work out in real life.
For example, as I mentioned in a previous posting, the U.S. abandoned
spin training for the PPL not long after WWII (I think), while Canada
stubbornly kept spin training right up until the 1990s, assuming it
was saving lives. Unfortunately, when Transport Canada looked at the
numbers in the 1990's, Canadian pilots (*all* of whom had spin
training) had a slightly higher stall/spin fatality rate than
U.S. pilots (most of whom had no spin training). Go figure --
obviously, risk-management is not a simple, incremental problem
(i.e. autopilot: +2, IFR GPS: +1, low ceiling: -2, etc.).

Still, I am willing to buy a wing-leveller on faith some day, even if
I cannot prove that it will make a significant difference in my flying
safety.


All the best,


David