4:1 Ratio of fatal US glider accidents, West vs. East

Using the Mississippi river as the dividing line, a new book on US Glider Accidents reveals the following statistics:

Page 124 chart totals...
----------East West Total
Accidents -124 201 326
Fatalities --15 53 68

38 additional fatalities in the Western US over the same period of time. 15 east, 53 west. Wow!, that is an absolutely shocking figure.

Anyone have any idea how the ratio of fatal glider accidents could be nearly 4:1 west vs. east?

Sincerely,

Sean
F2

We would need to know total # flights east vs west. Could simply be there are more glider flights in the west.

On Monday, January 27, 2014 1:08:23 PM UTC-7, wrote:
We would need to know total # flights east vs west. Could simply be there are more glider flights in the west.

Eastern gliders are still buried under the snow and out west we are flying!

Mike

My thunder has been stolen. We fly WAY more out west.

I'm sure the number of hours flown can easily explain the 4:1 ratio.

We do cross county thermal flights in the winter... 'nuf said.

Knowing the total number of flights for each population would be important, but as a Western pilot I wonder if this reflects the unforgiving nature of mountain flying? It would be helpful to know what kinds of accident these numbers are describing (collision with terrain, for example).

Suggestion for an additional way to look at this data, how many of these Western fatalities involved Eastern pilots flying in unfamiliar, unforgiving terrain?

Chris Young

On Monday, January 27, 2014 3:48:32 PM UTC-8, JS wrote:
There's a lot of winter boredom where it's cold?

Tehee!

Jim

I believe this subject came up before. You can use OLC to compare number of hours, flights, kms flown east vs west and you will find similar ratio which explains the difference. The soaring season never ends in the west. Another factor could indeed be the less forgiving terrain we often fly over in the west.
I am pretty sure this has nothing to do with quality of instructions as I recall a prominent instructor claims.

Ramy (who just had over 3 hours XC flight last weekend in the west)

Ramy wrote, On 1/27/2014 10:10 PM:
The soaring season never ends in the west.

If only it were true! You should say "southwest", 'cause the soaring
pretty much ends between November through February here in the Northwest
(Washington, Oregon, Idaho).

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)

On Monday, January 27, 2014 10:17:48 PM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
the soaring

pretty much ends between November through February here in the Northwest

(Washington, Oregon, Idaho).
--

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

Move to Minden and quit complaining!

We don't have anyone quite like you down here yet and your eccentric enough that you'd fit in nicely :c)!

bumper
QV & MKIV

On Monday, January 27, 2014 10:41:36 PM UTC-8, bumper wrote:

All - Here is a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet with fatal accident (tabs for summary as well as details). Each is categorized by phase of flight and type of accident - these are my interpretation from the NTSB reports. If there were multiple categories I went with the initiating cause (e.g. loss of control leading to structural breakup - there are several of these). The report IDs are included in the detail so you can look each one up. It is for the past 20 years (1994-2013 calendar years). There is a tab for ALL glider midairs similarly classified as well as type of flight.

I focused of fatal accidents since West showed a greater discrepancy here with more than twice the lethality of accidents in the East. The summary shows that much of the difference between West and East seems to be consistent with the more extreme flying in the west - there are a lot more accidents associated with in-flight stall/spin, flight into terrain and loss of control in all flight phases.

I have the FAA registration database sorted by state as well as OLC flights for 2013 by SSA region so I should be able to come up with some indicators of whether these higher accident numbers are associated with larger numbers of gliders or glider (OLC) flights in the west versus east.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...mc&usp=sharing

On Monday, January 27, 2014 11:17:40 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Monday, January 27, 2014 10:41:36 PM UTC-8, bumper wrote:

Total gliders registered by state (current, valid registrations) - East versus West of the Mississippi:

West 2523
East 1922

West is 31% higher than east so if the total hours or flights flown per year per glider is the same you'd expect about 31% more accidents in the West - everything else being equal.

(Note: FAA estimates that only 62% of the fleet is "active" and a casual scan shows some gliders with current registrations are registered to museums so clearly not all gliders are flying a lot - there is no FAA information to indicate if amount of flying per glider is different in the East vs the West).

Of the 3831 gliders with current registrations and a manufacturing date recorded the median age is 36 years old. Around 1000 gliders in the US are 20 years old or younger.

Now on to OLC.

9B