JFK Jr.'s mean ol wife

"Dan Luke" c172rgATbellsouthDOTnet wrote in message
...
"John Aldrich" wrote:
The problem with this argument is that everybody thinks they are a
good
driver/pilot.

I think hours flown to accidents/incidents is as good an indicator as
any.

2000+hours, no accidents, no incidents.

Perhaps you are a far above average pilot, but that anecdote does nothing
to
prove that you are safer flying than driving. My Uncle Wilson smoked
cigars
every day of his adult life - and inhaled. He lived to be 93 years old.
Does
that prove smoking is safe?

Cigars only have a 20% higher incidence of cancer than non-smokers, as
opposed to a 2000% higher risk for cigarettes. Adjusting your perception of
how safe flying is has already improved the statistics. Not nearly to the
percentage that FAA/EAA co-operation has, but there is nearly a 3 dB
improvement.

John P. Tarver, MS/PE

"Marten Kemp" wrote in message
...
Well, I admit that I *was* being a bit condescending in my original
question {said he, in a slightly abashed tone of voice}, but in my
defense I *did* find the statement amazing. My internal assumptions
database has subsequently been reloaded with the updated data.

I also admit that "opprobrium" wasn't the right word; I really meant
"obolquy" (though "calumny" comes close). I tend to use large words and
be snottily patronizing because I've never been good at constructing
wounding personal attacks while using the vernacular. (I also seem not
to be able to type at the moment. The number of t7pos has been positively
amazing. Time for more coffee.)

Martin, nobody likes to be outclassed by somebody who can take criticism so
honorably. In fact, I find your integrity offensive. It's just selfish of
you, to deny me my righteous flaming. This is Usenet, dammit! I was pretty
rude. Come on! Let me have it! Don't leave me down here in the gutter alone.

-Jonathan

"Tarver Engineering" wrote in message
...
I can immagine the two women argueing the entire trip, as one of them made
them late by going shopping. That can't be good for situational
awareness,
or concentration.

Point taken. I'm not sure I could look at the gauges with two hot chicks
engaged in a sprawling cat fight in my airplane. Maybe a flung shoe switched
off the autopilot while John was trying to take pictures.

After havng read hundreds of NTSB accident reports where experienced pilots
either simply had "bad luck" or did something "unwise" and people aboard
were killed, as far as crash statistics I think the average non-aviator is
thinking like this: "...Bob offered to fly me to Tahoe in his plane instead
of me driving.". What are the chance the plane will get to the tarmac at
Tahoe in one big undented piece versus me arriving safely if I just drive
it?"

So we're talking in terms of "transportation system mishaps per n
departures". I either go on the plane or I don't. It's ONE departure. I
don't care if there are 2 people aboard or 8. I don't care all that much if
the destination is 377 miles away or 912 miles. What I am concerned about is
"what is the chance that that aircraft will arrive at the destination
without killing anybody aboard?"

I would *suspect* that in that light, general aviation does not come out
looking too good. Does anyone know?
I would suspect the average motor car on the road does about 25-40
'departures' a week. I couldn't even hazard a guess for GA.

Reporting 'fatalities per million passenger miles' is like telling a telling
a new B-17 crew reporting to an 8th Air Force base in England in October
1943, "the lads have found we're losing one aircraft and crew for every
188,256 crew member miles we fly against Jerry."
The retort is sure to be, "swell, Sarge, but .... what percentage of crews
are making it through the 25 missions alive?"

Let's say that what they know is aircraft losses and total sorties flown. If
they lose 1 bomber in 143 sorties then a plane's survival rate for 25
missions is (1-(1/143)) ^ 25, or 83.9%. So their chances of survival are
about 13 out of 16.
If I am a LIFE magazine photographer and I'm just going on ONE mission, my
chance of survival is 142/143, or 99.3%. I'm pretty relaxed. (If it's
October 14th (Black Thursday) and the target is the ball bearing factories
at Schweinfurt...then my chances were 74.9%.)



"Ken Hornstein" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Marten Kemp wrote:
Dan Luke wrote:
You believe this in spite of the fact that the fatal accident rate is
700%
higher for personal flying than for driving? Doesn't that seem like
something you might want to think about a little more?
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

Sir, can you substantiate that amazing assertion?
Citations, websites, etc?

The statistics aren't easy to compare. But ...

From the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's report,
"2001 Annunal Assessment Of Motor Vehicle Crashes", which can be found
at the following URL:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd...2/Assess01.pdf

If you look at page 30, you can see a summary (based on year) of the
fatalities per 100 million vehicular miles travelled (VMT). For the
year 2001, passenger cars have 1.28 fatalities per 100M VMT, and
motorcycles have 33.38 fatalities per 100M VMT.

Now, the wrinkle here is that while automotive statistics are reported
in miles travelled, general aviation statistics are reported in hours
flown. For our 2001 aviation statistics, you can view them in the
Nall Report, a copy of which you can find at the following URL:

http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/02nall.pdf

Page 1 shows for 2001, there were 298 fatal accidents and 535 fatalities
for 26.2 million hours flown. The highway data is based on fatalities,
not fatal accidents, so let's use the latter figure, which gives us
2.042 fatalities per 100,000 hours flown.

So, how do we compare the two sets of data? One very simplistic way is
to pretend that everyone drives at 55 MPH, which would make automotive
statistics 1.28 fatalities per 1.82 million hours driven, or .703
fatalities per million hours driven. If you assume a slower driving
speed, the fatality rate per hour goes down, and if you assume a faster
one, it goes up. If you stick with 55 MPH, then you end up with a 29x
more times of being involved in a fatal accident with flying versus
driving.

If you compare motorcycles to aviation, 55 MPH gives you 18.3 fatalities
per million hours driven, and 1.83 fatalities per 100,000 hours drive,
which is relatively close to the statistics for aviation fatalities.

This is, of course, a very simplistic view of the accident data, and
there are lots of questions about how total hours are estimated, the
data is collected, etc etc. And I would advise anyone who was curious
about this to examine the reports themselves and draw their own
conclusions. (And it would be prudent to bring up the old Mark Twain
quote about liars, damned liars, and statisticians). But this can give
you an idea where the often-quoted statistics about GA being more
dangerous than driving, and approximately as dangerous as riding a
motorcycle, come from.

Personally, I believe that GA is definately more dangerous than
driving, but that the majority of the risk factors in GA are under the
control of the pilot. Thus, a knowledgable pilot who makes good
decisions is probably safer than the average person in a car, since in
a car (and especially in a motorcycle) you're more at the mercy of
other people. But even though every pilot receives a ton more training
than the average driver, flying is still in general more dangerous than
driving, which tells me it's important to never forget the importance
of good judgement.

--Ken

Jonathan Birge wrote:

"Marten Kemp" wrote in message
...
Well, I admit that I *was* being a bit condescending in my original
question {said he, in a slightly abashed tone of voice}, but in my
defense I *did* find the statement amazing. My internal assumptions
database has subsequently been reloaded with the updated data.

I also admit that "opprobrium" wasn't the right word; I really meant
"obolquy" (though "calumny" comes close). I tend to use large words and
be snottily patronizing because I've never been good at constructing
wounding personal attacks while using the vernacular. (I also seem not
to be able to type at the moment. The number of t7pos has been positively
amazing. Time for more coffee.)

Martin, nobody likes to be outclassed by somebody who can take criticism so
honorably. In fact, I find your integrity offensive. It's just selfish of
you, to deny me my righteous flaming. This is Usenet, dammit! I was pretty
rude. Come on! Let me have it! Don't leave me down here in the gutter alone.

-Jonathan

Okay, Johnny-boy.

*Read my farking sig* the next time and at
least get my name right, you jerk.

Feel better now? {grin}

-- Marten Kemp (note the "E" in my first name?)

"Highfllyer" wrote in message
...

"Jeff Franks" wrote in message
...

JFK Jr. wasn't yet rated and he didn't have a close call; he died and
took two people with him. The only positive is that his own criminal
negligence killed him as well as his passengers.

I wasn't aware that night flight required a rating...if we're gonna be
literal in here lets go all the way.


JFK Jr. was almost rated. He certainly had a great deal more instrument
time than the average PPL.

He had all the training required that he authorities think is necessary to
manoeuver a plane in IMC. If someone wants to make the argument that this
level of training is insufficient, then present evidence.

JFK was flying on a night when the weather was legally VFR.

If he HAD realized that it could be ACTUALLY IFR, while still being easily
VFR LEGALLY and as reported by the aviation weather people he might not
have
messed up.

He shouldn't have messed up that badly. How many more hours under the hood
would prevent this?

He got in trouble because he was flying using tried and proven VFR
techniques on a legally VFR night when VFR techniques would not work.
That
can happen ANYTIME at night, even on a clear night. It is all a matter of
visual reference.

Flying at night is instrument flying if you're actually going anywhere.
(This comment is not directed towards the poster to which I'm responding.)
And, with instrument flying skills, it's no big deal. But it is often real
IMC stuff.
moo

While I agree with the need to look at this kind of data in multiple
ways, I think the 'per departure' numbers may be very misleading.
First off, there are plenty of GA planes that make literally hundreds
of departures per week. I see training planes at my airport do a dozen
touch-and-goes an hour, and these planes often fly 30-40 hours a week
in the summer. Does that count as a 'departure'? If so, then that
would dramatically reduce the 'per departure' GA accident rate. If
not, then why count the automoble 'departure' that consists of a 1
mile drive to the video store? A more 'meaningful' comparison would be
to compare the fatalities in different groupings of activity. While
this is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, I think a reasonable question
would be "If I will be travelling more than 100 miles on this trip,
and going between two cities, what is the liklihood that I will arrive
safely in a GA plane vs. a car?" After all, airplanes and cars have
very different mission profiles on short trips. One can hardly compare
a 2 mile trip in a car to a 750 mile hard-IFR cross country. Neither
can one compare a T&G with an instructor aboard to a 250 mile car trip
in a driving blizzard. The comparison would be meaningless.

In this, I think GA will come out better than one might think. I
remember reading something from AAA a couple years ago basically
saying that long-distance driving (i.e. or more than two hours I
believe) was dramatically more dangerous than local driving. Which is
quite logical. I recently returned (driving) from a 150 mile trip, and
saw at least 10 crosses by the sides of the highway. I think that the
comparison between this kind of driving and GA flying a similar
distance will yield a reasonably close rate of fatality.

In the end, one thing we know for certain is that the vast majority of
aircraft fatalities are directly attributable to pilot error. I
randomly looked at 100 NTSB fatal-accident reports the other day (slow
day). 91% of these crashes were clearly pilot error. And, as the Nall
Report reiterates every year, something like 75% of all aircraft
accidents are related to just one of three causes (VFR into IMC,
low-level maneauvering [stall-spins], and fuel mismanagement. This
isn't complex stuff. This is trivially easy to prevent. All it takes
is training and discipline.

Personally, I think it is safer to fly GA with a 'professional'
quality pilot than it is to drive a similar distance (assuming a cross
country). If 90% of airplane fatalities can be attributed to pilots
acting stupid, then it stands to reason that if you only fly with
pilots who have the training and discipoline to *not* act the fool,
then you are much more likely to arrive safely than if you were flying
with the 'average' pilots. If GA has a reputation for being dangerous,
there is nobody to blame but ourselves. Honestly...is there *ever* an
excuse for running out of gas? Is there ever an excuse for
intentionally flying into clouds when you are not qualified or
prepared? But pilots do it all the time. And kill people.

I'd feel much safer in the back of a 182 travelling 200 miles, being
piloted by a pilot who never busts minima, who never lands with less
than hour of gas, and who never shows off than I would even driving my
own car that 200 miles. My odds of getting hit by a drunk driver, or
getting clipped by a truck that can't see me, or getting distracted
for that one second and not seeing the brake lights ahead of me seem
vastly higher in the car than in the plane.

Cheers

Cap

Happy Dog wrote:
Flying at night is instrument flying if you're actually going anywhere.
(This comment is not directed towards the poster to which I'm responding.)
And, with instrument flying skills, it's no big deal. But it is often real
IMC stuff.

On overly broad generalization by a long shot. I don't know what part of
the world you live in, but out here in the great fly-over there are plenty
of visual references for night flying in many weather conditions. I'd
consider "going anywhere" to include trips across multiple states for
hundreds of miles, and I've done that in night VFR numerous times. Yeah,
instrument skills are a valuable fallback, but the flights were not
instrument flights by a long shot.

"Marten Kemp" wrote in message
...
Martin, nobody likes to be outclassed by somebody who can take criticism
so
honorably. In fact, I find your integrity offensive. It's just selfish
of
you, to deny me my righteous flaming. This is Usenet, dammit! I was
pretty
rude. Come on! Let me have it! Don't leave me down here in the gutter
alone.

-Jonathan

Okay, Johnny-boy.

*Read my farking sig* the next time and at
least get my name right, you jerk.

Feel better now? {grin}

Much, thank you! Sorry about screwing up your name. That was unintentional.

Jonathan Birge wrote:

"Marten Kemp" wrote in message
...
Martin, nobody likes to be outclassed by somebody who can take criticism
so
honorably. In fact, I find your integrity offensive. It's just selfish
of
you, to deny me my righteous flaming. This is Usenet, dammit! I was
pretty
rude. Come on! Let me have it! Don't leave me down here in the gutter
alone.

-Jonathan

Okay, Johnny-boy.

*Read my farking sig* the next time and at
least get my name right, you jerk.

Feel better now? {grin}

Much, thank you! Sorry about screwing up your name. That was unintentional.

You're welcome. It happens a lot, actually.

-- Marten Kemp