Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site terak.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!hao!noao!terak!doug From: doug@terak.UUCP Newsgroups: net.aviation Subject: Re: is general aviation safe? (long) Message-ID: <229@terak.UUCP> Date: Mon, 17-Dec-84 13:05:44 EST Article-I.D.: terak.229 Posted: Mon Dec 17 13:05:44 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 00:27:09 EST References: <1243@orca.UUCP> Organization: Terak Corporation, Scottsdale, AZ, USA Lines: 77 [I am still on retainer as the Devil's Advocate] > Having thought about learning to fly for a few years, > I've sometimes wondered whether general aviation is reasonably > safe or really quite dangerous. The three main issues seem to > be: > 1. The mechanical reliability of the aircraft. > 2. The ability of the average pilot to cope with a real > emergency (landing on trees, control surface failure etc. > as has been dicussed recently). > 3. The survivability of a typical crash. > General Aviation CAN be safe. This depends (as we've all heard too often) almost entirely on the pilot. Unfortunately, there is an ENORMOUS amount (and I do mean a whole bunch) of pressure on GA pilots to cut corners. Fact is, most pilots who fly regularly cave in to these pressures in some aspect or other at least occasionally. You see, if you don't cut corners once in a while, you cannot fully depend on your plane for transportation. For instance, most serious private pilots get their instrument rating, so that they can depend on being able to use their planes even in bad weather. Duane Cole is a prominent airshow pilot, who is best known for his dead-stick aerobatic show which ends in a dead-stick landing. He is very vocal in his belief that IFR flight in single-engine planes is Russian Roulette. He feels that if the visibility is so bad or the ceiling so low that it isn't safe to fly under the weather, you'll never pull off an emergency landing after an engine failure. And if it IS safe to fly under the weather, why would you want to fly IN the weather? In Duane's book, "Happy Flying, Safely", he tells of a plane manufacturer's rep complaining, "Duane, you're killing the utility of single-engine planes." Duane replied, "And YOU are killing the PILOTS." Duane always allows 1 or 2 DAYS extra for layovers on every cross-country flight (he can't take the airlines, he needs his plane for the next airshow, right?). Makes transportation by private plane too slow and undependable for most people, so they don't allow time for weather or equipment delays. Another problem is that pilots who think of their airplanes as Transportation invariably move up to the most capable (and hence expensive) plane that they think they can afford. This brings a corollary that they can NOT afford to keep said plane in 100% shape. Each pilot has his own idea of just what are go/no-go items, those items which absolutely MUST be fixed. Now, consider this... if you have maintained your plane to such a degree that you have a 99% chance of arriving without trouble, then you have over 50% chance that you will have trouble within 70 flights. If for a single flight you have a 99.9% confidence level, then you have that 50% chance of trouble within 700 flights. 99.9% is a very high degree of confidence, but even if you allow 3 hours for each of those 700 flights, that is only 2100 hours of flight time. 2100 hours is definitely in the "experienced" category, but not particularly unusual. After all, at 200 hours a year, this is only 10-1/2 years of flying. I, for one, plan to fly more than 10-1/2 years of my life. But if the trouble that you encounter is fatal, you can't "average it out" in the future. My Rx for safety: buy less airplane than you can afford, then keep it in 100% shape; use cars and airlines for Transportation, use your plane for fun and for when you're NOT in a hurry. This will keep the pressure down so you can fly wisely and safely. Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug