2nd-Guessing Accidents (aka Seeking Personal Insight)

‘Gotov’ is exactly right: it’s impossible to determine a meaningful glider safety record of a country, because it would need to include a ratio of flights and/or flight hours to accidents. For example: If country ‘A’ had only 1 glider flight, and that glider crashed, they would have had only 1 glider accident, and if country ‘B’ had 10,000 glider flights, and 2 of them crashed, they would have had twice as many accidents as country ‘A,’ but they could definitely be considered the safer country. Unfortunately, countries only publish how many accidents they’ve had, and not how many flights or hours flown they’ve had, so we’ll never know who’s safety record is “good” or “bad,” or who’s “better” or “worse.”

With that said, yes, France has a lot of accidents, and there are reasons why. First, we have a lot of glider flights… A LOT! While the total number of flights isn’t published, in just the southeast corner of France alone there are several dozen glider clubs each launching several dozen gliders every day, all year long, weather permitting. Run the numbers: that’s a lot of gliders! Second, the terrain in the Alps is some of the most challenging and unforgiving terrain in the world to soar; it is inherently more dangerous to fly there, and will therefore raise the accident count. Nearly half of all the glider accidents in France occur in the Alps. Third, many foreign pilots come to France to fly. Many of those pilots fly their own gliders and few are members of a French club and therefore don’t benefit from the French training. Nearly one quarter of all accidents in France are by foreign pilots.

‘GC’ asked about the safety benefit of a mandatory 9am pilot briefing. Nearly one quarter of all accidents in France are in some way weather related. The most important feature of the morning pilot briefing is a thorough review of the weather. How many times have you asked a club member what they could expect from the day’s weather and they responded by looking up at the sky? That casual attitude in the mountains is a death sentence.

As you’re a tough crowd, I’ve carefully fact-checked myself against a French safety review which documents the statistics I’ve mentioned. The review is over 10 years old, but it’s better than nothing! If you're interested, follow this link to the review:

http://www.bea.aero/etudes/volavoile...le19992001.pdf

Chris Fleming
F2