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#1
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Reducing the Accident Rate
Hi All,
Just got back from the national convention of my type club (insert glowing comments about beautiful planes, wonderful people, fun activities, helpful FBO here) So here's a topic related to Jay's thread "Scary". At the membership meeting, the club's Safety Director rightly pointed out something many here have commented on: every GA accident is "news" these days, and if we want to keep flying (and keep being able to buy insurance) we pilots, as a group, need to lower the accident rate. So how? I have a great deal of respect for this man. He's a stand-up guy, a pilot with breadth and depth of experience, and a long-time CFI. But his "solution" is to have a one-day course, associated with the National Convention, in which pilots pay a hefty fee ($100-$200) for 'recurrant training' done by "national names". Call me a skeptic, but I feel this goes along with WINGS seminars: it's 'preaching to the choir', to a large extent. Maybe 10 or at most, 20% of the membership makes it to the conventions. The ones who would pay to take this course are, like the pilots who show up at the WINGS seminars, those who have already made a mental committment to recurrant training and who, if every safety seminar in the country became extinct, would "roll their own" out of books and magazines and discussions with pilots and CFIs they respect. Most of the pilots who are taking off without proper respect for DA or flying into ice/tstorms/IMC or buzzing their buddy's house, I think, aren't coming to these things. Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe they come, and think "oh, well, only ignorant low-hours pilots have trouble when they try to run cows around with their plane, I'm a super-skilled high-time pilot so *I* can do it just fine" (insert analogous phrase about other activities)? Anyway, here's the question: how DO we reduce the accident rate? How do we preach, not just to the choir, but to the 80-90% of pilots who *don't* attend WINGS seminars or other recurrant training? Cheers, Sydney |
#2
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I agree that just about all safety seminars are attended by people who do
not need encouragement to fly safely, and I am at a loss as to how to reach the others except by person-to-person contact. Few of us are willing to take the bull by the horns and talk to miscreants, so the next best has to be calling in the FSDO safety program manager or an accident prevention counselor. I hope that Jay recorded the clueless VFR pilot's tail number, name, or whatever in order to pass the info on to someone at the FBO where he rented the plane and ultimately to his instructor if possible. This was such an egregious violation that half-measures won't do the job. Bob Gardner "Snowbird" wrote in message om... Hi All, Just got back from the national convention of my type club (insert glowing comments about beautiful planes, wonderful people, fun activities, helpful FBO here) So here's a topic related to Jay's thread "Scary". At the membership meeting, the club's Safety Director rightly pointed out something many here have commented on: every GA accident is "news" these days, and if we want to keep flying (and keep being able to buy insurance) we pilots, as a group, need to lower the accident rate. So how? I have a great deal of respect for this man. He's a stand-up guy, a pilot with breadth and depth of experience, and a long-time CFI. But his "solution" is to have a one-day course, associated with the National Convention, in which pilots pay a hefty fee ($100-$200) for 'recurrant training' done by "national names". Call me a skeptic, but I feel this goes along with WINGS seminars: it's 'preaching to the choir', to a large extent. Maybe 10 or at most, 20% of the membership makes it to the conventions. The ones who would pay to take this course are, like the pilots who show up at the WINGS seminars, those who have already made a mental committment to recurrant training and who, if every safety seminar in the country became extinct, would "roll their own" out of books and magazines and discussions with pilots and CFIs they respect. Most of the pilots who are taking off without proper respect for DA or flying into ice/tstorms/IMC or buzzing their buddy's house, I think, aren't coming to these things. Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe they come, and think "oh, well, only ignorant low-hours pilots have trouble when they try to run cows around with their plane, I'm a super-skilled high-time pilot so *I* can do it just fine" (insert analogous phrase about other activities)? Anyway, here's the question: how DO we reduce the accident rate? How do we preach, not just to the choir, but to the 80-90% of pilots who *don't* attend WINGS seminars or other recurrant training? Cheers, Sydney |
#3
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"Snowbird" wrote: Anyway, here's the question: how DO we reduce the accident rate? How do we preach, not just to the choir, but to the 80-90% of pilots who *don't* attend WINGS seminars or other recurrant training? Wow, talk about your $64 question! I dunno Sydney, I think we might have reached a natural, human factors limit on GA safety under the current regulations: note the more-or-less flat statistics of recent years. And it really doesn't appear that new technology is the answer, NASA's pipedreams notwithstanding. Unless we want to have more stringent rules that further restrict what private pilots can do, I can't think of a way we can reach the less safety conscious members of the pilot population, unless it's with heat-seeking missiles. -- Dan C172RG at BFM |
#4
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"Snowbird" wrote in message om... Hi All, Just got back from the national convention of my type club (insert glowing comments about beautiful planes, wonderful people, fun activities, helpful FBO here) So here's a topic related to Jay's thread "Scary". At the membership meeting, the club's Safety Director rightly pointed out something many here have commented on: every GA accident is "news" these days, and if we want to keep flying (and keep being able to buy insurance) we pilots, as a group, need to lower the accident rate. I'm not sure I agree with this. Although GA accidents are reported somewhat hysterically by the news media, have the press reports led to a reduction in my flying privileges? I don't think so. With regard to insurance, I believe they respond to actuarial statistics, not press reports. Assuming our collective accident rates don't change there is no reason to assume insurance rates will change either - unless you are saying the rates are already prohibitive and we need to lower them. Safer planes will probably eventually start to make a difference, as the fleet slowly upgrades. But this will take a long time, both for the equipment upgrades and the training to use the equipment. Most of the pilots who are taking off without proper respect for DA or flying into ice/tstorms/IMC or buzzing their buddy's house, I think, aren't coming to these things. Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe they come, and think "oh, well, only ignorant low-hours pilots have trouble when they try to run cows around with their plane, I'm a super-skilled high-time pilot so *I* can do it just fine" (insert analogous phrase about other activities)? I wonder if this population of "cowboy pilots" is really significant. Sure we have all run into one or two, but I'm sure the vast majority of pilots we all meet are safety conscious and reasonably diligent. That said, even if the cowboys are much more accident prone (which they probably are) the vast majority of accidents probably happen to normal pilots who just find themselves temporarily overmatched by some chain of events. Which is not at all surprising. Almost everyone has, at some point, screwed up and cracked up their car, boat, motorcycle. On a simpler level, we have all missed appointments, dropped plates and broken bones. Perhaps we are already at the point of "accidents happen" - it's just that in aviation the accidents tend cause a higher price. Anyway, FWIW, I suspect that the single biggest factor in reducing accidents is to increase currency requirements, especially for IFR. That said, I certainly don't want it to happen - I'll live with the current accident rates and take my chances. Michael |
#5
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I don't think that I would pay $100 or $200 to attend a one-day seminar run
by 'big names.' I am not convinced that it would be helpful in any way. Of course, I fly every day, read everything I can get my hands on, and study the regulations and manuals constantly. Back in the 1970s I remember an FAA guy saying that we can give pilots the best equipment, the best training, the best weather information and air traffic control, but we can't give them good judgment. It is difficult enough with the dolts posting here who show all the dangerous attitudes: macho, anti-authority, complacency and all the rest. Some of the guys who constantly criticize instructors, the FAA, maintenance, and everybody else really concern me. The "I have ten thousand hours and I don't care what some pup says" syndrome (even when the 'pup' is more than 50 years old and has decades of flying experience of his own) is evident here in full force. At least they appear to care a little bit about flight safety. I am beginning to think that there really isn't anything you can do with some people. All this week we have been working with a woman who wants to commit suicide (she is clinically depressed). What she does is she takes all her anti-depressant medication with beer. Well, this won't kill her, but it is likely to lower the oxygen levels in her blood sufficiently to cause permanent brain damage. Apparently she would rather live the rest of her life having somebody feed her, wipe her bib, and change her diaper rather than face her rather minor problems. I think some pilots are like that. They can't be motivated to even open their mail, let alone attend a safety seminar. They would rather die. And some of them will. I gave a commercial student a stage check -- the final one before his check ride. He had been very insistent that he is ready for the commercial check ride and had been demanding that we sign him off for it. His instructor finally tired of his complaints and sent him to me for the stage check, hoping that I would reinforce what the instructor had already been telling him -- that he was not ready. The student did terribly on the oral quizzing, unable to demonstrate even rudimentary knowledge of aircraft systems, FARs, or weather. Apparently the only studying he did was to read one of those ASA oral exam guides and memorize the answers. If you deviated even slightly from the questions in that book he was unable to answer them. His flying was the same. Although the clouds were reported as 1200 few and 4900 broken, it was easy to see that the 'few' became scattered to broken the moment you left the vicinity of the airport in any direction. He did not know how to start the Cutlass properly, missed or screwed up several other checklist items starting the engine, did not know how the GPS worked but attempted to program it anyway, taxied with the mixture full rich and then did not know how to clear the resultant fouled plug, then departed straight into the clouds. As he was starting to enter the clouds he turned to me and said, "What do I do now?" He stopped being pilot in command! He did not leave himself an 'out' if he got into trouble. I had to take over the plane to keep him from going VFR into the clouds, and then direct him back to the airport which was less than a mile away. The interesting thing was that there was plenty of room to deviate around the low clouds, but he did not attempt to do this, nor did he try to fly to a clear area. Instead, he departed straight for the heaviest and thickest clouds in the area and did not deviate at all because he had not planned for it. Overall, I found his performance very disappointing. On the ground he refused to admit that he had made any errors and offered all kinds of excuses. I think that is part of the real problem. Some people just don't accept the idea of being pilot in command. They can't control themselves, let alone an airplane. They blame everybody else for their problems. They think the FAA, the instructors, the FBOs, the mechanics, the government, and the 'system' are all incompetent. After I explained to this student that he was in real danger and just why, and told him that I expected that he know how to fly an airplane instead of passing a test, he showed some change of heart and a determination to study harder. I hope he meant it. |
#6
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I think that is part of the real problem. Some people just don't accept
the idea of being pilot in command. Wow, ain't it the truth -- in all aspects of life. There are drivers, and there are the driven. -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
#7
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Dan Luke wrote:
Unless we want to have more stringent rules that further restrict what private pilots can do, I can't think of a way we can reach the less safety conscious members of the pilot population, unless it's with heat-seeking missiles. Maybe. But I'd start with a different question: why don't those that don't attend WINGs programs (and the like) attend WINGs programs (and the like)? I find myself astonished that so many don't (is the 80-90% number accurate?). Perhaps I'm just lucky, in that I'm located in an area where seminars are plentiful and frequent. Attending seminars was just a natural thing to do, even if only as an opportunity to hang out with pilots. Perhaps this isn't so everywhere? Why else not attend? - Andrew |
#8
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I just got done reading a book called "They Called It Pilot Error"
and boy are we in trouble if some of the knuckleheads that are in this book are in any numbers out there. Gladly, most of the really stupid ones died in the accidents mentioned in this book, but you know if those existed, theres 10x that many that just havent crashed or had close ones yet. Pilots on drugs and alcohol, with expired licenses/medicals, blatantly breaking reg after reg, making up their own approaches and rules, and of course the comical one about those drunk dudes shooting holes through their own wings. They have to really skew the averages, so I dont see any hope of reducing the accident rate as long as these boneheads are among us. And of course the media jump on these stories like flies on sh*t, which of course they themselves are. On this recent really long trip I took, I got flight following everywhere that I wasn't IFR, and I heard a lot of 'lost' sounding pilots on freq, not literally, but as if they had no clue as to what they were up to. And controllers having to repeatedly ask them. And of course while on the sector I hear stuff that make me wonder how fun can it possibly be for this pilot who sounds as if he's 100 miles behind the airplane and no clue what's right ahead of him (hills/weather). I brush some of that off as poor radio technique or nerves, some of it, not all of it. I dont see the rate going down, not with an aging fleet, and an aging group of pilots. Mathematically, isnt that impossible anyway? Less airplanes and even with a level number of crashes? Assuming the airplanes involved are no longer in service? Anyway, I'm rambling, and the only accident rate I care about is my personal rate. But check out that book, it's pretty sad, and of course the author and NASA rep seem to have an axe to grind. Chris |
#9
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"SeeAndAvoid" wrote in message link.net... I just got done reading a book called "They Called It Pilot Error" and boy are we in trouble if some of the knuckleheads that are in this book are in any numbers out there. The only knucklehead in the book that is really out there is the author, who despite his claims to being an experienced pilot manages to confuse an HSI with the attitude indicator, does not appear to understand the goals of fundamental flight training, and generally seems to know little about aviation except for a few buzzwords that he does not really understand their meaning. All the stories are fiction, though some of them are kind of fun to read. The only place you will find where he admits that the book is entirely fiction is an oblique mention of it in the introduction. You will not find any of the incidents in the NTSB database. |
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