Dana wrote:
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:59:13 +0100, Mxsmanic
wrote:

If all GA midair collisions were eliminated, 27 people would still be
alive, based on your own cited statistics. Is saving lives not a
sufficient justification for eliminating midair collisions?

If it were possible, sure, but many _more_ lives could be saved by
putting the effort elsewhere. It's a matter of allocation of
resources.

Thank you.

I had originally included that very assessment in my original post but
decided to remove it to allow the statistics to "speak for themselves."

More opinion:
In fact, a review of the Nall Report statistics indicates that a large
majority of fatal fixed wing GA accidents could be categorized as due to
fundamental "improper use of flight controls." I.e. inadequate or rusty
flight skill (or one-time fatal mistakes of otherwise experienced pilots.)
Furthermore, since those causes appear to have dropped to a plateau below
which they appear not to be improving, and considering the high cost of
maintaining and improving those skills, the way I see it the following are
probably true:

1) Improvement in skill level of GA pilots is unlikely to improve in the
future in any cost-effective way. It seems reasonable to assume that the
pilot population already practices its skills as much as it can now afford.
Further improvements in piloting can probably only be made if GA becomes
more "elite" by raising the skill level required. (Though this winnowing of
the pilot population would run contrary to efforts to "Grow GA".)

2) If the GA pilot population is to improve its safety record or to grow in
number without compromising its existing safety record, then given what is
known of the current pilot population capabilities, the current design of
fixed wing aircraft controls must be changed in some fundamental ways.

For example, addition of some machine intelligence in the flight control
systems that takes into account not just pilot demands, but limits to those
demands imposed by the current flight regime, and is active through all
phases of flight so that it aids and/or limits controls to controllable
regimes. The statistics currently indicate a greater probability of human
failure than machine failure, so this seems likely to yield a net reduction
in the accident rate. On the other hand the cost aspect is unknown.