How safe is it, really?

"June" wrote in message
om...
[...]
We have 2 little girls. I worry for his safety as it seems there is
another small plane crash every other time you turn on the news. I
think he should focus on this hobby when the kids are older, not when
he has such a young family.

Your opinions would be appreciated.

Is there really? Where do you live? Here in the Seattle area, we have news
of a fatal car crash on the news almost every night. Local aviation
accidents are extremely unusual, as far as news reports go, maybe 6 or 12 a
year.

I would say before you make the claim that "there is another small plane
crash every other time you turn on the news", you actually do a real survey.
Keep a log of every time you watch the news, and note when a car crash and
which an airplane crash are reported. Do this for a few months. At the
end, compare your notes with your perception.

I think you'll find that there's your perception does not match your notes.
It's human nature to focus on things that worry us the most, in spite of
relatively low risk, and to overlook things that we take for granted, in
spite of relatively high risk.

As far as the actual relative risks go, most people agree that general
aviation is more dangerous than driving (as a point of comparison).
Disagreements come up with respect to just how much more dangerous, and how
safe one can make it. This mainly is a result of the fact that you can
evaluate the relative safety in a variety of ways, not all of which result
in the exact same answer.

Factual things that are not open to debate include that there are nearly
50,000 fatalaties due to motor vehicles every year, while there are only
about 500 fatalities in fixed-wing general aviation aircraft every year
(from around 300 accidents). Granted, there are more people driving than
flying, so the relative risks are higher for flying than driving. But an
individual's total exposure is also almost always lower for flying than for
driving, usually by a significant amount, simply because they do it a lot
less.

It is also a fact that there are lots of activities that people commonly do
that are as dangerous or more dangerous than flying. Whether you have a
similar debate with your husband regarding those types of activities, I
don't know.

IMHO, if you and your family are not prepared to lose either you or your
husband, then you need to fix that. Whether or not he's flying, bad things
can happen, and they won't necessarily wait until the kids are older. If
you ARE prepared, then you ought to (IMHO) live life, and not worry so much
about whether what you're doing could kill you.

Nearly everything we do has the potential for killing us, including taking a
shower. Even for a pilot, the cumulative odds of something else killing
that pilot are MUCH greater than the singular odds of flying killing that
pilot. The real question should not be "how dangerous is flying", but
rather "how much MORE dangerous will be life be if I fly?" I personally
don't believe that the incremental increase in risk of death is all that
great from flying (once you consider all the other ways to get killed), even
if flying itself is demonstrably more dangerous than an individual activity
(like driving).

I realize this reply is as much a philosophical one as it is one that
actually answers your question. But honestly, what did you expect, really?
Every single one of us you've asked has made the decision to fly, in spite
of whatever risks exist. We all obviously think that flying is reasonably
safe, whether that's because of a relatively low accident rate or a
philosophically fatalistic point of view.

Pete

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
high risk.

IMHO, if you and your family are not prepared to lose either you or your
husband, then you need to fix that. Whether or not he's flying, bad
things can happen, and they won't necessarily wait until the kids are
older. If you ARE prepared, then you ought to (IMHO) live life, and not
worry so much about whether what you're doing could kill you.

Pete

Good point and well put!

Mike
MU-2

It seems to me (a fairly high time Mooney driver) that most GA airplanes end up
bent, not worn out. The arguement here, and the question I answer in the
affermative every time I take the runway for takeoff, is that I'm willing to
roll the die one more time. I've assumed my particular die has a couple of
thousand white faces, and only one black one. Having said that, the black face
has come fairly close to the top a few times, and I consider myself (don't we
all) a careful pilot.

At about 400 hours tt I was flying a Ranger (normal carberated Mooney) IFR,
started an approach, pulled on the carb heat, and the damned carb heat cable
broke. Tried everything to get power -- gear, landing light, flaps, everything.
Turned out if I leaned the engine it ran well enough for me to fly the miss and
struggle to my alternate. Yes, it was IMC, night, and an approach into an
uncontolled airport. One might argue one shouldn't attempt VOR approaches under
those circumstances, but hell, the airports nearby were reporting conditions
fairly well above my personal minimums.

I've had an alternator failure in soft IFR, a vacuum pump fail in similiar
circumstances. It wouldn't have taken much for one other minor error or
condition to have turned what might be considered 'trained for' emergencies
into something the NTSB would have written about.

What about you guys? I suspect if your log book has more than a few hundard
hours you've been in circumstances where your particular die's black face
nearly came up. Was the start of the sequence 'pilot error' or equipment?

I've figured the Mooney lies somewhere between bike and car as a safe means of
transportation. Aren't bikes about 10 X the risk of a car on a per mile basis,
and GA about 3 X (after excluding drunk pilots and those who run out of gas,
those kinds of what most of us would call avoidable errors)?

What about you guys? I suspect if your log book has more than a few
hundard
hours you've been in circumstances where your particular die's black face
nearly came up. Was the start of the sequence 'pilot error' or equipment?

The types of experiences you have described are so far beyond the realm of
anything I've experienced, that I feel the need to reassure the original
poster that this is NOT typical of most pilots who fly light planes. If it
were, this poor lady should drag her husband out of the cockpit, kicking and
screaming, right NOW.

I've been flying for ten years. I've got over 900 hours as PIC, and another
400 hours of right seat time (my wife is a pilot, too.). In that time I
have NEVER experienced an in-flight emergency or come close to death.

We have flown from coast to coast, in all seasons, first in poorly
maintained rental planes, and -- since '98 -- in our own well-maintained
aircraft.

In the rental planes I experienced a couple of failures:

1. Electrical system. The lights went out in two rental planes, resulting
in little more than inconvenience.
2. Water in the fuel. I once sumped over a QUART of water from a rental
plane. That's why we do pre-flight inspections.
3. Broken throttle cable. This happened on the ground, luckily, during
run-up.

In planes I have owned, we have experienced no mechanical failures of any
kind, mostly because I insist on maintaining our aircraft to perfection.

We watch the weather closely, and carefully pick our times to fly. We
ALWAYS refuel after every flight, so that we always have full tanks. Since
we can fly non-stop for over 5 hours, this pretty much eliminates the
"running out of gas" scenario.

We don't "buzz" anyone, we don't overload the aircraft, and we don't fly
when the weather sucks. Our one concession to safety (we also have two
kids, both of whom have flown since they were tots) is that we no longer fly
at night.

We also ride motorcycles, BTW, although less and less as time goes by.

Life is a terminal condition, and there ain't no one getting off this planet
alive. There are so many people in this world who are simply waiting to
die -- I hope the original poster lets her husband live his dream.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck"

We watch the weather closely, and carefully pick our times to fly. We
ALWAYS refuel after every flight, so that we always have full tanks.
Since we can fly non-stop for over 5 hours, this pretty much eliminates
the "running out of gas" scenario.

I don't know why more pilots don't do this. I've been in a few tricky
situations and it's always been a comforting feeling not to have to even
*think* about fuel. In marginal or potentially challenging weather, my
reserve is more like two hours than the required. But I often see pilots
flying with "just enough" when they don't have to.

We don't "buzz" anyone, we don't overload the aircraft, and we don't fly
when the weather sucks. Our one concession to safety (we also have two
kids, both of whom have flown since they were tots) is that we no longer
fly at night.

Time for that turbine twin...

moo

"AJW" wrote:
What about you guys? I suspect if your log book has more than a few
hundard
hours you've been in circumstances where your particular die's black face
nearly came up. Was the start of the sequence 'pilot error' or equipment?

In 900+ hours I've had one emergency: a voltage regulator failure in IMC.
Not too scary, really. I had time to notify ATC of my intentions and I used
the portable GPS on the yoke to fly a VOR approach into BFM.
--
Dan
C-172RG at BFM

"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
nk.net...

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
high risk.

IMHO, if you and your family are not prepared to lose either you or your
husband, then you need to fix that. Whether or not he's flying, bad
things can happen, and they won't necessarily wait until the kids are
older. If you ARE prepared, then you ought to (IMHO) live life, and not
worry so much about whether what you're doing could kill you.

Pete

Good point and well put!

Mike
MU-2


Well Said Pete.

Mike
MU-2

Do you know Sandy McAusland?
VL

No, I don't think so. Should I?

Mike
MU-2


"MLenoch" wrote in message
...
Mike
MU-2

Do you know Sandy McAusland?
VL

I need some information from people 'in the field'. My husband has
his private license and is just starting to work on his IFR for
recreational flying. He wants to buy into a plane partnership, saying
he will be saving money rather than renting.

We have 2 little girls. I worry for his safety as it seems there is
another small plane crash every other time you turn on the news. I
think he should focus on this hobby when the kids are older, not when
he has such a young family.

Your opinions would be appreciated.
He is in more danger of dying in a car crash on the way to the airport.
Driving is still the most dangerous activity we humans do.

Richard

"June" wrote in message
om...