Fatal Accidents Related to the Fly-In

[martymayes]

I think about this a lot ,,,,, more as I get older and closer to the end ,,, is flying more dangerous.
I have had 17 friends killed in airplanes and I have no idea how many in cars or other. I don't keep track.
Admittedly most of the people I call friend fly.
I know why all of them died, they or in one case their employer killed them.
That is 17 things I don't do.
Now I use my airplane most on a single route, I can fly it 2 1/2 hours or drive it in 8.
I estimate in 8 hours I will meet about 1000 cars of which statistically 10% are impaired so that is 100 potential ways for me to get whacked.
Now when I fly there is only one thing to run into, and I know exactly where it is.
If I get killed, I caused it, not some sleepy or drunk driver.
Flying is better.

You are quite correct Ray. There are risks while driving and there are risks when flying.

Managing risk while flying is much easier than while driving because so much is directly under the pilot's control, as you have indicated. Unfortunately, for the same reason, pilots have more opportunity to make bad choices. Using the common metrics, by time or distance travelled, driving ends up being the safer option, which further supports the hypothesis that pilots seem to be good at making bad choices.

If you get killed, it's because you caused it? I'm thinking if you don't get killed, it's also because you caused it. Flying is better but it does require some effort.

[Frank Giger]

Bah. Of the 72 of us that graduated high school back in '83, ten of us are dead, and none from plane wrecks. People die doing all sorts of things - flying isn't more dangerous than anything else we do so long as we take precautions.

Yes, the risk is higher than driving, but only by a degree, and at the point where flying is safe it will stop being enjoyable. I know I don't get excited about boarding a Delta flight, at least not nearly as much as when climbing into the front seat of a Champ.

Indeed, I would be just as cautious about driving to OSH as I would be flying there....though I currently think my skill set isn't up to mixing it up in the mass arrival and departure of Airventure.

[Mayhemxpc]

Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.
— Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. c. early 1930's.

It has been said that flying isn’t dangerous. Crashing is dangerous. This is more than a trite comment. The reality is that automobiles are much more crash resistant than aircraft, and particularly general aviation aircraft. Things are getting better in that regard, but overall, given a crash (or in the standardization world I frequent, “an undesirable event”) the automobile is more survivable than a general aviation aircraft. (Generally. My airplane was built in 1967 and it probably stands up pretty well with regards to survivability against a 1967 automobile.)

Like all things, it is a difficult comparison. If you only consider automobiles moving at general aviation cruise speeds, I am guessing that fatality rates might be comparable. (I spent enough time in Germany seeing and responding to accidents on the autobahn to make that a fairly educated guess. Once upon a time I had the statistics to back it up.) If you only consider accidents where the airplane is moving at typical automobile speeds (landing and taxiing) then again, airplanes do pretty well in terms of survivability. It is because we ask airplanes to do so much more that the RISK EXPOSURE is so much greater than travelling by car.

John and Martha King have recently become general aviation risk management missionaries. One of their recurrent themes is that most of the risks general aviation pilots face can be managed – or “treated” in risk management technical-speak. The problem is that many pilots are ignorant of – or not fully aware of identifying and treating the risks they face. Crashworthiness is one thing a pilot can address, if not cure. What is very true from the previous posts is that we as pilots and owners of aircraft can address and treat so many of the risks we face. Drivers, on the other hand, are faced with many risks outside of their control (e.g., other drivers who are impaired, distracted, or incompetent.) I saw a statistic some time that reported 35% of all people killed in drunk driving accidents were not even in the same car as the drunk driver.

Flying is not inherently dangerous. It does have its own risks. Pilots who do not recognize and manage those risks become statistics in the Nall report.

-- Chris Mayer
-- N424AF

[rwanttaja]

Ray, flying is more fun, and satisfying than driving, and I find it less stressful in good weather, BUT YOU ARE KIDDING YOURSELF IF YOU THINK GEN AV FLYING IS SAFER THAN DRIVING.
IT IS NOT A MATTER OF OPINION, THERE ARE STATISTICS, ie the Nall Report, AND PRIVATE GEN AV FLYING HAS SEVERAL TIMES THE FATAL ACCIDENT RATES OF DRIVING.
MAJOR AIRLINE TRAVEL IN THE US IS SAFER THAN DRIVING.

We need to always strive to improve our safety record, flying into Oshkosh or wherever, but falsely claiming flying is safer is putting our head in the sand.

Bill's absolutely correct, of course. IIRC, flying has an accident rate about ten times higher than driving

In our favor, as others have mentioned, the pilot is more directly responsible for his fate. You can be a perfect driver, make all the right decisions, but that still doesn't save you from the bad decisions made by the multitude of other drivers you'll encounter on the way. You're the master of your fate in an airplane; in a car, you're at the mercy of the distracted, the inept, the aggressive, and the inebriated.

Probably a key difference is that mechanical failure pays a relatively low part in auto crashes. In most cases, the car can just pull over; irritating, but no harm done. In contrast, mechanical failure in flight is a serious event.

Ron Wanttaja

[Tom Charpentier]

Very well put Ron! As I like to tell people, "flying is as safe as you make it." It's an exercise in personal responsibility (and the cynic would point out it's an increasingly rare one for the modern age). You are in charge of your proficiency, checking the weather, ensuring the plane is airworthy, and deciding how many risk factors you want to load up on in the course of your flight. Fly safe and you shouldn't have a problem beating the average.

[martymayes]

The problem is that many pilots are ignorant of – or not fully aware of identifying and treating the risks they face.

Problem #2 is the pilots you just identified are the ones least likely to seek out help for improvement.

[rwanttaja]

Problem #2 is the pilots you just identified are the ones least likely to seek out help for improvement.

IIRC, the Lancair folks instituted a training program a number of years ago. Folks who have taken that class have a signficantly lower accident rate. But there's always the issue: How much of that reduction was due to the training received, vs. how much was due to that fact that the attendees were already safety-minded enough to TAKE the class....

Ron Wanttaja

[Mayhemxpc]

Marty and Ron, Of course you both are absolutely correct. As mentioned above I deal with standardization in high risk environments. One recurring theme is that ISO certification does not makes a company is good. Rather,the company's commitment to excellence leads to certification. Now to build on Ron's point. At AV, I went to the forum on basic stick and rudder skills held at the IAC. At the beginning, the presenter asked how many in the crowd regularly practiced the private pilot practical test maneuvers since they got their certificate. Less than half (MUCH less) of the people in attendance raised their hands. And these were the people who were interested enough in improving their skills to come to the forum.

[Rick Rademacher]

I am wondering if the armored vehicles parked next to 36R will be moved before next year’s AirVenture. In retrospect, to move them further way from landing aircraft seems like a no brainer.

“The NTSB released a preliminary report on the crash Aug. 6, which includes the facts and circumstances but no indication what caused the accident. The amateur-built Zimmerman Breezy (being operated as a personal flight) touched down on Runway 36R and "appeared to bounce during the landing roll," the NTSB report states. The Breezy then veered right off the runway and struck armored vehicles parked near the airport perimeter. “

[Frank Giger]

LOL, that's the truth of it - the kinds of people who go to safety training aren't the people that need it the most.

The thing is the average pilot that gets into trouble isn't grossly negligent; it's usually a case of not knowing what they don't know. Heck, I'm guilty of it.

I thought I knew weather. My first job in the Army dealt with meterological effects on smoke - inversion layers, thermals, etc. - so I approached weather too confidently and got a suprise on what unstable air actually means when one is in an aircraft, particularly a light one like a Champ. Nothing strained but my eyes for being held so wide at my first taste of "moderate" turbulence.

At our chapter meetings we occasionally have one of our IFR type guys brief us on the ADSB stuff. Initially I wanted to go into glassy-eyed mode and daydream of low-and-slow VFR flight, but then it dawned on me that I'll be encountering more and more aircraft with it and pilots used to having it - and I'll be invisible to their magic box, as I don't have a transponder. Yes, he'll still be looking to see-and-avoid, but human nature being what it is he'll be looking first for what's on the screen or just double checking the all clear it's giving him. So I better understand how his system works and what he is working off of.

If it wasn't for our chapter thinking Big Picture Aviation I wouldn't have given ADSB-out a second thought and ignored the topic completely. Will it save my life some day? I dunno, but it sure as heck won't kill me.