Wide-ranging Safety Discussion...?

I don't pretend to be an expert, but I wanted to pull out two comments
from this and another thread:

I also think it's believable that some experienced pilots may relax their safety
margins over time. *Fine, untill the day they really need them.

and:

I cannot believe this is pilot error ,comp pilots have so much instinctive skill, that
is what allows them to deal with every thing else while there body flys the plane.
So my thoughts are medical ,or possible the main ballast dumped and the fin stayed
in and pushed the c of g beyond the recoverable range.

In my opinion, these comments, while heartfelt, point out exactly why
I think it's difficult to have any kind of meaningful safety
discussion within the community. First, of course, experienced
pilots relax (or as needed, tighten) their safety margins, that is how
one becomes an experienced pilot. Safety margins necessarily vary
according to the nature of the flight. My margins at 100 hours were
very different from my margins at 1200. My margins taking a passenger
for a ride around the airport are quite different than flying in a
competition. I think it quite simplistic to think that there is one
true set of safety margins that apply to all pilots with all
experience levels under all circumstances, and as a result, it is
impossible to "train" all pilots to a consistent level of "skill" that
will keep them 99.99% safe.

Second, I see a certain element of denial that plays into all safety
discussions. In order to be willing to continue flying (or driving,
etc.), I needed to believe that my skills, experience, and margins
were sufficient to keep me safe from making the kinds of simple errors
other (less safe) pilots made. This created a bit of a conundrum, as
periodically during my soaring career, other pilots that I readily
acknowledged had equal or greater piloting skills than myself still
managed to make fatal errors doing the sorts of things I thought I was
"safe" doing. In fact, of the ten glider pilots I've personally known
who had fatal accidents, all but two were either at my level of skill
or well beyond. There are three ways to handle this conundrum. One
is to simply denigrate the perceived skills and judgement of the pilot
post-accident (which tends to apply here on r.a.s., unless we're
talking about a well known/liked contest pilot). The second is to
find some technological solution to the problem. The third is to
reach the conclusion that NO pilot is immune from making mistakes
(particularly, the seemingly benign choices that lead unexpectedly to
a critical situation), and to adjust the way one thinks while flying
accordingly...

Marc

Psychology of Safety

http://www.flyingmag.com/safety/left...chology-safety

This is a great article and it really stuck with me when I read it back when it was published.

Does anyone know a link that has a big database of soaring safety articles? ... Aaron

On Jun 30, 10:42*am, akiley wrote:
This is a great article and it really stuck with me when I read it back when it was published.

Does anyone know a link that has a big database of soaring safety articles? *... Aaron

I have a small database of soaring safety articles

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john...m#safety_rules

On Tuesday, June 26, 2012 2:31:06 PM UTC-5, Bill D wrote:
On Jun 26, 10:54*am, soartech
wrote:
So the next issue of Soaring magazine will come off the press without
a single word about this horrible accident... like it never happened!!
Head in the sand attitudes will not fix this problem.
WE NEED to air the dirty laundry until this problem is much better. We
can't depend on speculation on RAS or
digging for NTSB reports which often don't contain anything helpful.
Give me the facts, ma'am.

Soaring Magazine isn't the place for this subject but the SSF web site
is. I'd like to see detailed no-holds-barred discussion of every
accident. Unfortunately, making public allegations of incompetence
against a deceased pilot CAN get you sued by irate family members.
There is a need to tread responsibly - and carefully.

Why is Soaring Magazine not the right venue for a detailed discussion of accidents? AOPA Pilot has lots of articles on this topic, and it is one of the more interesting, not to mention informative, parts of the magazine.

On Sunday, July 1, 2012 10:52:37 PM UTC-4, Mike Schumann wrote:

Why is Soaring Magazine not the right venue for a detailed discussion of accidents?

The majority of the fatalities discussed in Soaring are the fictional characters found in Dr. Dan's Soaring RX column; and the magazine gets grief over that (see this month's letters to the editor). Now imagine what would happen if real accidents were openly discussed.

The obituary section in the magazine (Final Glide) does not even mention if the death happened in a glider... not even an asterisk next to the name.

I wonder if this editorial policy is itself a historical accident, or if the policy evolved over the years. Were accidents ever reported in the magazine? I'd guess that they were and that it caused some discord (this is pure speculation).

On Wednesday, July 4, 2012 6:56:09 PM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:

The obituary section in the magazine (Final Glide) does not even mention if the death happened in a glider... not even an asterisk next to the name.

I opened the latest Soaring Magazine to find a safety-related letter to the editor by a competition pilot recently killed during a competition, and the mention of another such pilot in the rankings of another competition. That's food for thought.

People (that is, the general public) generally misjudge the risk involved in anything when rare events are involved. It is a well-studied fact that people cannot correctly estimate probabilities of low-frequency events (see Nobel prize winner Kahneman & Tversky's work), and if people are told about these events (as in the media), they become very salient and their probability is over-estimated (see Barron&Erev).

Thus, there are sound reasons why a public magazine does not discuss actual fatalities in a timely manner; however, I agree that this does not serve the soaring community well.

I like the "Never Again" column in AOPA magazine. Perhaps that would be a good compromise.

On 7/4/2012 4:56 PM, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Sunday, July 1, 2012 10:52:37 PM UTC-4, Mike Schumann wrote:

Why is Soaring Magazine not the right venue for a detailed discussion of
accidents?

The majority of the fatalities discussed in Soaring are the fictional
characters found in Dr. Dan's Soaring RX column; and the magazine gets
grief over that (see this month's letters to the editor). Now imagine what
would happen if real accidents were openly discussed.

Everyone's entitled to opinions, and encouragement of the sharing of them is a
fundamental aspect of "the U.S. system." As is learning how to agree to
disagree...
- - - - - -


The obituary section in the magazine (Final Glide) does not even mention if
the death happened in a glider... not even an asterisk next to the name.

I wonder if this editorial policy is itself a historical accident, or if
the policy evolved over the years. Were accidents ever reported in the
magazine? I'd guess that they were and that it caused some discord (this
is pure speculation).


SSA members have online access to "Soaring" magazine - a treMENdous resource,
btw!!! - and a search using "Safety Corner" will yield decades' worth of
columns (beginning, I seem to remember, in the 1960s) of "useful safety
stuff," very often including description/assessment of real-world-explicit
incidents & accidents.

A search using "George Thelen" will yield author-specific sub-columns mostly
from the '80s and '90s, though George didn't limit himself strictly to
accident reporting.

Great stuff all, IMHO...
- - - - - -

After I'd begun taking soaring instruction in '72, but even before my first
copy of "Soaring" arrived, my club's chief instructor handed me a stapled
package of what turned out to be copies of "Safety Corner"...to tide me over
until my subscription started, he smiled. Then he added he expected me to tell
him what lesson I learned after I'd absorbed the reading material he'd given
me. (Curses! His freebie came with strings attached.)

Put me in the camp that recognizes "Soaring" mag is likely read by some
"'members of the general public," but who also believes its
primary-intended-audience is soaring *enthusiasts*. In any event, even - if
it's still around; I don't know - every issue I ever saw of the v-e-r-y
"general-flying-audience" magazine "Flying" openly discussed real-world
accidents, pretty much in every issue, by multiple authors, some on-staff,
some by readers.

Someone will surely note that "Flying" mag wasn't put out by a member
organization as SSA is. AOPA is a member organization as is EAA. Both of their
monthly "general audience" magazines routinely discuss various aspects of
aviation/piloting safety, sometimes "purely statistically" sometimes using
real-world examples.

I find the arguments: (paraphrasing) "SSA will be at risk/SSA will scare off
potential members," not terribly compelling reasons to NOT discuss in the
magazine real-world-scenario incidents/accidents. JMHO...
- - - - - -

MAJOR Kudos to every individual involved in making happen what Chuck Coyne
writes about in the July "Soaring" mag's "Flight Lines" column. Open
discussion hardly gets any better than what he describes!

Bob W.

On Wednesday, July 4, 2012 3:56:09 PM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Sunday, July 1, 2012 10:52:37 PM UTC-4, Mike Schumann wrote:

Why is Soaring Magazine not the right venue for a detailed discussion of accidents?

The majority of the fatalities discussed in Soaring are the fictional characters found in Dr. Dan's Soaring RX column; and the magazine gets grief over that (see this month's letters to the editor). Now imagine what would happen if real accidents were openly discussed.

The obituary section in the magazine (Final Glide) does not even mention if the death happened in a glider... not even an asterisk next to the name.

I wonder if this editorial policy is itself a historical accident, or if the policy evolved over the years. Were accidents ever reported in the magazine? I'd guess that they were and that it caused some discord (this is pure speculation).

At least some of the accidents described in that column are not fictional at all, except the name/place etc. A recent article described an accident which happened in Hobbs a decade ago if I recall correct.

Ramy

+1 On Sunday, July 1, 2012 10:52:37 PM UTC-4, Mike Schumann wrote:
On Tuesday, June 26, 2012 2:31:06 PM UTC-5, Bill D wrote:
On Jun 26, 10:54*am, soartech
wrote:
So the next issue of Soaring magazine will come off the press without
a single word about this horrible accident... like it never happened!!
Head in the sand attitudes will not fix this problem.
WE NEED to air the dirty laundry until this problem is much better. We
can't depend on speculation on RAS or
digging for NTSB reports which often don't contain anything helpful.
Give me the facts, ma'am.

Soaring Magazine isn't the place for this subject but the SSF web site
is. I'd like to see detailed no-holds-barred discussion of every
accident. Unfortunately, making public allegations of incompetence
against a deceased pilot CAN get you sued by irate family members.
There is a need to tread responsibly - and carefully.

Why is Soaring Magazine not the right venue for a detailed discussion of accidents? AOPA Pilot has lots of articles on this topic, and it is one of the more interesting, not to mention informative, parts of the magazine.