From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!alice!rabbit!wolit Newsgroups: net.aviation Title: Re: WSJ Articles Article-I.D.: rabbit.662 Posted: Thu Aug 5 17:19:31 1982 Received: Sun Aug 8 02:50:42 1982 I agree that there's nothing very new or surprising in the articles. Their semi-hysterical tone, however, does serve to point up an interesting disparity that exists in the attitude of the general public (and also among many in the aviation community) toward flying as opposed to other forms of transportation. People demand an extraordinarily high level of safety, training, and professionalism in flying that they neither expect nor even desire in bus, train, sea, or automobile travel. They see flying as being done in meticulously maintained, state-of-the-art vehicles, guided by a team of computers and human experts in the air and on the ground. At the same time, they ASSUME that the buses and trains in which they ride are barely holding together, and are driven by everyday people like themselves. They get in their cars or boats, without fastening seat belts and often drunk, drive off without the slightest pretense of an inspection, and navigate within ten feet of other vehicles at relative speeds in excess of 120 mph, and yet are outraged to learn that builders of small planes don't make them able to withstand 40g crashes. General aviation pilots feed this myth, partly to reassure nervous friends and relatives, partly to reassure themselves ("whistling past the graveyard"), by supporting the idea of the perfection of aircraft and air traffic control technology, often stressing that what they do is the same as what airline pilots do. Certainly, no one connected with the aviation industry is going to try to debunk this mythology. The government, the airlines, the makers of airplanes (both big and small) benefit greatly from it. I, for one, would find it difficult to tell my parents, for example, that I'm about as well trained to fly a plane as I am to drive a car (recognizing the relative difficulties of these tasks), or that, in order to make it light enough to fly and cheap (!) enough to buy, the people who made my plane made it LESS crashworthy than Toyota made my car. OF COURSE, if every FBO had a simulator for its 152's of the kind that the airlines use for their 747's (if such a thing existed), student pilots would be better equipped to fly them safely. The problem is, there would be no student pilots who could afford the training (which explains why there are no such simulators around). Perhaps we should take a more realistic approach to answering challenges such as those presented by these articles. Instead of juggling statistics around (useful if you want to confuse the opposition, but otherwise meaningless), we should say, "Yes, general aviation does not have an admirable safety record. Neither does automobile or motorcycle driving. We try to do the best with what we have to work with, but recognize that we are human, and have limited financial resources, just like you."