How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:24:40 AM UTC-6, Waveguru wrote:
I hope I never get tired of blasting along at near redline within a wingspan of stuff.



Boggs

Those were possibly Klaus Holighaus last words...
Tinking about it some more I guess that no, Klaus was too smart for that.

I'll bet Klaus wasn't going fast.

Boggs

On Monday, January 13, 2014 9:03:49 AM UTC-5, wrote:

"Worrying about a glider accident is completely irrational..."

I don't think that it is fair to take that statement out of context. Here is what I said:

summary of text omitted: my chances of dieing from all causes in the next ten years is 19%, see original post if interested in where this number comes from.

son_of_flubber wrote:
It's obvious to me that my chances of dying in a glider are much much better than 1 in 5. So it is much much more likely that I will die of some other cause before I live long enough to die in a glider. Worrying about a glider accident is completely irrational (until I disregard the inherent dangers and start flying like an idiot.) Sure it could happen, but it is much more likely to die from something else. And as I get older, the odds of dying in a glider continue to drop.

The key word that you gloss over is "worry". Worry means to feel anxiety, and feeling anxiety in the air, reduces my performance. The extreme case is to feel anxiety to the point of panic where performance goes through the floor. Anxiety and worry make flying more dangerous.

If you read what I wrote, you will see that I did not decide to disregard the inherent dangers of flying when I decided to stop worrying. I'm saying that you can pay much closer attention to those dangers if you stop feeling anxious (aka stop worrying).

wrote:
You obviously haven't read the famous Gantenbrink article:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/safety-comes-first-e.html

At your suggestion I've gone back and reread this article. To use Bruno Gantenbrink's numbers, a world champion has a 10% chance of dieing in a glider (and lower levels of pilots like me have lower mortality rates). My chance of dieing from natural causes and non-flying related accidents in the next ten years is 19%. Even if I were a world champion, 19% is twice 10%. 2:1 (this grossly exaggerates the flying related mortality because we're talking about the next ten years, not an entire flying career). If you understand statistics, this puts the risks of flying in perspective. If you think that statistics are mumbo-jumbo, feel free to disregard my reasoning.

wrote:
Nobody decides to go out there and start "flying like an idiot" as you put it.

From what I've seen, "flying like an idiot" is a clear and present danger that every pilot is capable of falling into. Being honest about the mistakes that we make and changing our habits/style to avoid those same mistakes in the future is good piloting. I know that I'm capable of "flying like an idiot" but I don't worry about it. I just try my best to avoid doing dumb stuff. When I start "flying like an idiot" on a routine basis (it could happen), I will stop flying. At some point, I will start taking an annual flight review because things can change fast.

On Monday, January 13, 2014 9:58:06 AM UTC-5, kirk.stant wrote:

So you better worry about dying in a glider accident - dude, it happens!

I know that flying is dangerous and I'm actually a "squeaky wheel" about safety issues in pretty much every situation, not just flying. I just think that it is better to do something about a safety issue, than to worry about it. Worry/anxiety clouds the mind. I guess that worry/anxiety is the only thing that motivates some people wrt safety, but that is not me.


And as you get older, you become even more dangerous.

You missed my point. I agree that it's obvious that as piloting capacities deteriorate with age, that we are more likely to do something dumb or make a mistake. But (also obvious) as you get older, your chances of dieing from natural causes in the next few years increase as well.

We don't have the numbers to say whether an 80 year pilot is more likely to die in a glider than a 70 year old pilot. It is probably fair to say that in the last year (or few months) of natural life (assuming a rapid drop-off of mental and physical capabilities), a pilot who continues to fly has a much higher chance of dieing in a glider accident than he did for his entire flying career. I saw that happen once and I plan to stop flying before I become that dangerous to innocent bystanders.

Thank you Debbie Downer.

Well, since it's winter and the sky looks flat today, I'll attempt to show
you how little I know about statistics:

Say the chance of flipping a coin and getting heads is 1:2 or 0.5. The odds
of flipping that coin twice and getting heads twice is 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25.
The odds of flipping it three times (same logic) is 0.125. With that in
mind, what are the odds that the fourth flip will be heads?

Do you really think that, since 1 in 10 German champions died in a glider
crash (wasn't that 3 of 32?), that the remainder should quit flying since
they have a 1 in 10 chance of dieing in a glider crash? "Let's see... I've
had 9 flights and survived, so I guess I'll die if I takeoff again."

Why not follow the advice of Alfred E. Newman?

"son_of_flubber" wrote in message
...
On Monday, January 13, 2014 9:03:49 AM UTC-5, wrote:

"Worrying about a glider accident is completely irrational..."

I don't think that it is fair to take that statement out of context. Here
is what I said:

summary of text omitted: my chances of dieing from all causes in the next
ten years is 19%, see original post if interested in where this number comes
from.

son_of_flubber wrote:
It's obvious to me that my chances of dying in a glider are much much
better than 1 in 5. So it is much much more likely that I will die of
some other cause before I live long enough to die in a glider. Worrying
about a glider accident is completely irrational (until I disregard the
inherent dangers and start flying like an idiot.) Sure it could happen,
but it is much more likely to die from something else. And as I get
older, the odds of dying in a glider continue to drop.

The key word that you gloss over is "worry". Worry means to feel anxiety,
and feeling anxiety in the air, reduces my performance. The extreme case is
to feel anxiety to the point of panic where performance goes through the
floor. Anxiety and worry make flying more dangerous.

If you read what I wrote, you will see that I did not decide to disregard
the inherent dangers of flying when I decided to stop worrying. I'm saying
that you can pay much closer attention to those dangers if you stop feeling
anxious (aka stop worrying).

wrote:
You obviously haven't read the famous Gantenbrink article:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/safety-comes-first-e.html

At your suggestion I've gone back and reread this article. To use Bruno
Gantenbrink's numbers, a world champion has a 10% chance of dieing in a
glider (and lower levels of pilots like me have lower mortality rates). My
chance of dieing from natural causes and non-flying related accidents in the
next ten years is 19%. Even if I were a world champion, 19% is twice 10%.
2:1 (this grossly exaggerates the flying related mortality because we're
talking about the next ten years, not an entire flying career). If you
understand statistics, this puts the risks of flying in perspective. If you
think that statistics are mumbo-jumbo, feel free to disregard my reasoning.

wrote:
Nobody decides to go out there and start "flying like an idiot" as you put
it.

From what I've seen, "flying like an idiot" is a clear and present danger
that every pilot is capable of falling into. Being honest about the
mistakes that we make and changing our habits/style to avoid those same
mistakes in the future is good piloting. I know that I'm capable of "flying
like an idiot" but I don't worry about it. I just try my best to avoid
doing dumb stuff. When I start "flying like an idiot" on a routine basis
(it could happen), I will stop flying. At some point, I will start taking
an annual flight review because things can change fast.

On Monday, January 13, 2014 5:55:05 AM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:

Many years ago there was some sort of mortality list published. It's the only list I've ever seen gliding on. It stated:

The odds of an accidental death, 1/1500
The odds of death in a gliding accident, 1/1800

There are 6000 SSA members in clubs/chapters. Some other number fly in private settings and with commercial operations. That number might be 2000 to 6000, which gives me an active number of 8000 to 12000, so quite a variation. I recently saw an FAA number of 24,400 glider pilots, but we all no many are no longer actively using the rating.

Picking the middle ground at 10,000, there were 5 fatalities in 2013. 1/2000. There were 8 in 2012, 1/1250 (two sort of anomalies; one a Pipistrel Virus, one a triple fatal) Might normalize this to 6, which would be 1/1666. 2011, 9, 1/1.1111 (one may have been stricken in flight, yet there it is and those who might have, did not prevent this pilot from flying. Another was probably probably like the Pipistrel count). So, it could be rationalized as 7, 1/1428. 2010, 5 or 1/2000. 2009, 7 of the 8 were in gliders. 2008, 7 again. 2007, 3 so 1/3333 beat the odds. 2007, 6, but one was most assuredly a suicide, so a skewed factor, thus 5 is the acceptable number. Again, we're at 1/2000. 1/1800 just kind of looks about right given what we know about the pilot population. The number is likely better than overall odds of traffic, ladders, being a pedestrian, or cleaning the gutters, etc.. Taking the raw numbers, gliding seems quite reasonable if you are in good health, use due diligence, and remain current. The SSF would like to improve on our numbers. I think we might. But I think it could require a major re-thinking of our soaring culture.
That exists in our competition community to some extent. It's greater in some of the European soaring organizations. I know pilots that reject this approach. A couple of years ago a notable instructor suggested the FAA was killing us. Not sure I agree, but I don't think they're helping. To that end, I'm not sure many feel EASA is helping either.

My $0.02,

Frank Whiteley

On Friday, January 17, 2014 1:49:17 PM UTC-5, Dan Marotta wrote:

Do you really think that, since 1 in 10 German champions died in a glider
crash (wasn't that 3 of 32?), that the remainder should quit flying since
they have a 1 in 10 chance of dieing in a glider crash? "Let's see... I've
had 9 flights and survived, so I guess I'll die if I takeoff again."

I don't see how you got that from what I wrote. I've no clue about the motivations of world champion glider pilots and no opinion about their choices..

I'm pretty sure that I will die of natural causes. I don't worry about dying of natural causes, but I do everything that I can to stay healthy (sleep well, good diet, exercise, be sociable, don't worry and enjoy life).

I'm pretty sure that I will die of natural causes BEFORE I die in a glider. The point of my original post is that I find this conjecture to be a good reason to stop worrying about dieing in a glider. My second reason to stop worrying is that worry (feeling anxiety) degrades the quality of my flying.. At the end of the day, I still do everything that I can to fly safely and reduce risk to myself and innocent bystanders. I don't think that worry should be my motivation to fly safely.

On Friday, January 17, 2014 10:38:48 PM UTC-5, Frank Whiteley wrote:
1/1800 just kind of looks about right given what we know about the pilot population.

Thanks for this well-considered number, it completes the picture. To relate it back to the context of my original point...

1/1800 equates to a .18% chance of glider related fatality in each year of flying. Over ten years that would be .18 X 10 = 1.8% cumulative risk over 10 years (say 2%).

Side by side with my original mortality prognosis (individual based on my age and health status):

I have a 19% chance of dieing from all other causes in the next ten years.

I have a 2% chance of dieing in a glider in the next 10 years.

Say a 10:1 chance of dying of natural causes before I die in a glider. I'm good with that, but I will keep looking for ways to improve my odds.

Actually, at .18% chance of death each year, the probability of dying in the next 10 years is:
..0018(1 + .9982 + (.9982)^2 + (.9982)^3 + (.9982)^4 + ... + (.9982)^9)
= 1.7855%

It's the probability of dying in a particular year times the probability of surviving to that year, summed over each of the years.

Sorry, it's the former actuary in me coming out on a cold winter day.

- John