"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
om...
The accident rate is about 7 per 100,000 hours flown, and the fatal
accident rate is about 1.3 per 100,000 hours flown. Remember that
these are averages, and it includes high risk activities such as low
level maneuvering, scud running and fuel exhaustion. My guess is, for
a conservative pilot with an instrument rating, the rate is likely to
be about half of the above numbers. A typical private pilot flies
about 100 hours per year. At that rate, it would be 300 years before
he would encounter an accident, or 1500 years for a fatal accident.

Comparison to riding a motorcycle is a good one. But the difference
is, a motorcycle accident doesn't always make the evening news.


I agree that those are the odds but I don't understand why you think that
the risk for a "conservative pilot with an instrument rating is about half".
Keep in mind that the 1.3/100k hrs includes corporate flying which has a
fatal accident rate *much* lower than for piston GA and a lot of the "GA"
hours are in that catagory.

Mike
MU-2