In article , Andrew Sarangan
wrote:
In 1947 there were over 9000 aviation accidents. In 2003 there were only
1500 accidents. How is safety improving if the students are being
increasingly prohibited from doing useful things?

In 1947, not only were virtually all light planes taildraggers (meaning
lots of groundlooping), airfields were short, weather forecasting wasn't
as good, instrumentation for weather flying was not fitted to many light
planes (even most trainers now have the full IFR kit), the planes
were lower powered (the typical trainer of '47 was an 85hp C140 on
the more powerful end, 65hp aircraft were more typical - leading
to higher risk mountain and hot weather flying), wake turbulence
wasn't understood and NAVAIDs in many instances simply didn't exist.

Not to mention in 1947, Cessna made more C140s alone than the entire
light plane industry's output in 2003.

The more telling stats is that despite Britain's more regulated aviation
environment, the British accident rate is HIGHER than in the US.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"