Glass Panel Failure Rate?

Call me old fashioned, but you won't find me behind a glass panel or
flying a "plastic" airplane. Just something about flying a bird where
all the instruments don't rely on one type of system and the wings won't
ever delaminate no matter what color I paint them...

Helen

"Helen Woods" wrote in message
...
Call me old fashioned, but you won't find me behind a glass panel or
flying a "plastic" airplane. Just something about flying a bird where
all the instruments don't rely on one type of system and the wings won't
ever delaminate no matter what color I paint them...

Helen

But you will get into a single engine airplane, where there is a single
point of failure, called an engine? Your statement is not logical.

You should be wary of getting into an airplane made of a structure that does
not have a set of failure modes that are completely understood. Fiberglass
airplanes do have a failure mode of weakening from overheating due to paint
color, which is understood. No need to be afraid, there. Aluminum has a
metal fatigue problem. Afraid to get in them? Nope, cause the failure
modes are understood.

You should be wary of getting into an airplane that does not have redundancy
in the electrical system, when the instruments are all electric. The glass
panel is not a problem, if it has a long period between failures that has
been demonstrated. I would say, after the second failure, all of the
electrical system, and all of the sensors should have been replaced, as it
was not the display with the problem. This assumes that the display has
already demonstrated a long time between failures, which I am quite sure has
been done.

Risk assessment, and mitigation, is the name of the game.
--
Jim in NC

Morgans wrote:

"Helen Woods" wrote in message
...
Call me old fashioned, but you won't find me behind a glass panel or
flying a "plastic" airplane. Just something about flying a bird where
all the instruments don't rely on one type of system and the wings won't
ever delaminate no matter what color I paint them...

Helen

But you will get into a single engine airplane, where there is a single
point of failure, called an engine? Your statement is not logical.

Sure it is. Her tactic is called risk-minimization.

George Patterson
I prefer Heaven for climate but Hell for company.

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 16:51:21 GMT, George Patterson
wrote:



Morgans wrote:

"Helen Woods" wrote in message
...
Call me old fashioned, but you won't find me behind a glass panel or
flying a "plastic" airplane. Just something about flying a bird where
all the instruments don't rely on one type of system and the wings won't
ever delaminate no matter what color I paint them...

Helen

But you will get into a single engine airplane, where there is a single
point of failure, called an engine? Your statement is not logical.

Sure it is. Her tactic is called risk-minimization.

I would agree if you said risk-minimization rationalization.
As the failure modes are known with none showing as being more prone
to failure, it has to come down to *either* personal preference, or
rationalization.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

George Patterson
I prefer Heaven for climate but Hell for company.

George,

Her tactic is called risk-minimization.


Well, it might be a try at that. But I can't see where she is examining
and judging the risks in a rational manner. So I'd call it acting on
prejudice.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Still have revisionary modes on the other display(s) and a set of iron
gages for backup. Heard this same silly stuff years ago when we went
from G-III to G-IV. The reality is when the juice goes away all you
are looking at on the iron gages is flags anyway and you are back to
standbys with their own power supply. What's the diff?

Gliders have been using very long and thin wings made of glass and
carbon for at least 25 years. Never heard of one having a wing
failure. In that time, how many Bonanza's and Malibu's have rained
out of the clouds? Virtually all new aircraft such as Gulfstreams'
G-550 have carbon flight controls and fairings. They've put an
arbitrary service life on them because the government says you have
to, but they don't work harden, so they haven't been able to wear them
out on a test stand. BTW - you can paint them any color you want
because they use high temp pre-pregs that are cured with heat in an
autoclave.

Don Hammer wrote:
Gliders have been using very long and thin wings made of glass and
carbon for at least 25 years. Never heard of one having a wing
failure.

There was a 'high profile' accidnet in Minden a few years ago. Two
well-known pilots I believe. I'm sure a quick search on ntsb.gov will show
it.

Hilton

In article .net,
Hilton wrote:
Don Hammer wrote:
Gliders have been using very long and thin wings made of glass and
carbon for at least 25 years. Never heard of one having a wing
failure.

There was a 'high profile' accidnet in Minden a few years ago. Two
well-known pilots I believe. I'm sure a quick search on ntsb.gov will show
it.

It's still pretty rare though - we don't hear of glass gliders falling
out of the sky all the time. There are the occasional failures of
"traditionally" constructed (wooden) gliders too, last year a Ka-7 in
England broke up in level flight at 1000' AGL.

The only glass glider I've heard of breaking up got struck by lightning.

--
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"

In article .net,
Hilton wrote:
Don Hammer wrote:
Gliders have been using very long and thin wings made of glass and
carbon for at least 25 years. Never heard of one having a wing
failure.

There was a 'high profile' accidnet in Minden a few years ago. Two
well-known pilots I believe. I'm sure a quick search on ntsb.gov will show
it.

Here it the NTSB report on that one:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...12X19310&key=1

The basic summary is the pilots over controlled recovering from a
spin. One of the pilots was the head of the National Air and Space
Museum and a high time fighter pilot.

We happened to have some USAF pilots visiting our CAP squadron soon
after this accident, and there was an interesting discussion between
a local glider CFI and the USAF guys. The amount of control movement
needed in a glider is much less then in a fighter, and the CFI
speculated at the time that the pilot over controlled it, causing
the structural failure. That is pretty much what the NTSB found.

The material the wing was made of made no difference in this accident.
The aircraft exceeded design loads, and failed.

John
--
John Clear - http://www.clear-prop.org/

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 08:44:15 -0500, Helen Woods
wrote:

Call me old fashioned, but you won't find me behind a glass panel or
flying a "plastic" airplane. Just something about flying a bird where
all the instruments don't rely on one type of system and the wings won't
ever delaminate no matter what color I paint them...

I love plastic airplanes and glass panels...Can't afford either so
that's why I'm building the G-III.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Helen