Larry Dighera wrote:
http://www.examiner.com/a-1314730~Fe...Gliders.ht ml
Feds Call for Alerts on All Air Gliders
Apr 1, 2008 5:28 PM (25 days ago) By SCOTT SONNER, AP
....
NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker recommended in a March 31 letter to the
board that the glider exemption be eliminated in part because of an
NTSB investigation into a collision between a glider and a private jet
about 40 miles southeast of Reno in August 2006.
In that case, the glider pilot - who parachuted to safety - had a
transponder on his aircraft but had turned it off to conserve battery
power.
Heh - it had a transponder. Now if the FAA is willing to foot the bill
for developing a battery that can actually last... they may as well
write regulations dictating that all aircraft have engines.
"As evidenced by this accident, aircraft that are not using or not
equipped with transponders and are operating in areas transited by air
carrier traffic represent a collision hazard," Rosenker wrote in the
letter first made public on Tuesday.
Idiots are in charge that don't understand the concept of anecdotal
evidence. It isn't hard to locate mid-air collisions wherein both
aircraft HAD operating transponders. And there are cases where ATC
and/or flight following was an active element:
154 fatalities in this famous one:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...02X01435&key=1
5 fatalities, transponders irrelevant:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...25X00951&key=2
1 fatality, and an unreliable transponder anyway:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...11X09562&key=1
2 fatalities, and inadequate ATC advisory:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...08X07187&key=1
1 fatality, transponders in use and pilot who died had requested flight
following and been assigned a transponder code, for all the good it did:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...06X01819&key=2
Of the 60 near mid-air collisions from 1988 to 2007
Boggle - how to lie wih statistics. Search the NTSB database for
"glider" and "midair" back to 1962 and you'll get only 7 results. Only 3
of the 7 resulted in fatalities (but 9 fatalities in all).
Inverted or misguided safety priorities.