Airplane crash threads...

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UngaWunga

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UngaWunga
Everytime a plane crashes, especially a small plane, a thread almost immediately appears here. I'm curious why. You don't see it on car forums, and very rarely on motorcycle forums unless they know the person that crashed. In the threads I've read here, they all seem to contain about the same number of pages of "hopes and prayers" type stuff, then trying to find blame without any info, and then the threads get resurrected when the NTSB report comes out.
 
Well as far as car crashes, that would be a little hard to keep up with. So that's probably why they don't do it on the car sites.

"Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day."
 
I think it's because we try to learn from them. The same reason that I watch Air Crash Investigation series. I don't get off on seeing people die, but I'm hoping to remember something that pilots did wrong (like when you are on the take off roll and your airspeed indicator is not working correctly, don't leave the ground, your pitot might be clogged, etc). Trying to force a plane down in a bad storm instread of diverting. Rushing due to time issues. Lots of other examples I can't think off type of my head.
 
Unlike Cars and Motorcycles, when airplanes crash it is usually due to an error made by the pilot, rather than random unpredictable events, either in his/r planning, lack of training, attitude, attention to maintenance issues, etc. Talking about it is a way for us to pause and evaluate our own methods, standards, bad habits, gaps in training etc.
 
UngaWunga said:
Everytime a plane crashes, especially a small plane, a thread almost immediately appears here. I'm curious why. You don't see it on car forums, and very rarely on motorcycle forums unless they know the person that crashed. In the threads I've read here, they all seem to contain about the same number of pages of "hopes and prayers" type stuff, then trying to find blame without any info, and then the threads get resurrected when the NTSB report comes out.
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Because airplane crashes make the news. They are not that common. Car and ‘scooter’ crashes are not usually front page news. Airplane crashes are, at least locally. Yeah, we pick em apart sometimes. There’s a lot of speculation. Things are learned through this speculation. And things are learned through the final report which may contradict the initial ‘speculations.’ But things brought up during the ‘speculation’ phase may, maybe, invoke some thought into what ‘may’ have actually happened. And that may, maybe, hopefully prevent a re-occurence
 
Probably a tiny bit somewhere in our lizard brains, if we can come up with what caused that guy to crash we can invent a little but if comfort by saying to ourselves "whew! Well I'd never do that"

And probably another tiny little bit of it is just complete Fascination and curiosity.

We do all truly want to learn why these things happen and how to avoid them but there is no doubt that there is natural human curiosity about these things. You bring up car wrecks. When there's a car wreck why is there a traffic jam in the other lane? Everybody wants to see what happened.
 
UngaWunga said:
You don't see it on car forums
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was going to say this but someone beat me to it:
BrianNC said:
on average 3,287 deaths a day
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..that would be a lot of threads!

You will see crashes come up on some occasions though. Years ago when I was bigger into the off roading thing you would see a thread pop up on the FJCruiser forums if someone had a crash they could learn from. Typically involved something while four wheeling, but occasionally you would have the guy just slip off the highway and got in an accident. People generally posted these mainly as learning opportunities, and other times just as a testament to the vehicle "can't believe I survived rolling down that 250 foot cliff" - like this guy here who ended up with his own thread

But no, you won't see car forums with threads about that person in the Corolla who just took the ramp too fast one night and hit black ice and crashed. Plus, there are a lot of accidents / incidents that occur and don't show up on this forum, or get one page or replies. It's the crazier crashes (the twin in FL, ERAU losing a wing, etc.) that get the longer threads, where there is more to learn from or less of a consensus on the cause

Why do we do it?
We're all aware of the risks and the "dangerous sport" stigma our hobby carries.. so when someone crashes I think there is a genuine curiosity to find out what happened or what caused it so we feel safer and better about it ourselves. It helps you emotionally mitigate the risk. Like that guy who crashed his twin in the fog in FL.. I think most here wrote that accident off as "not a real data point" since most people wouldn't have attempted a takeoff in those conditions

Even crashes that the pilot can do very little about, like the wing failure at ERAU, you tend to see an emotional desire to blame it on maintenance, Piper, ERAU's training culture, or whatever.. to still absolve ourselves from potentially making that same mistake and having the same fate
 
This actually isn't a bad question. I have to admit, the fairly constant accident threads get to be a bit morbid. I'm not saying you can't learn from them, etc - but for me if I read that stuff every single day I start to question whether or not I really want to be flying an airplane. An acquaintance of mine was involved in a horrific accident at Deer Valley. A brand new cylinder had catastrophically failed on take off. One of the guys survived and made a full recovery, but the other was not so lucky. He has been recovering from a traumatic brain injury. I don't know that he will ever be completely normal again. I had a tough time flying a few weeks after that accident.

I read a lot of accident reports, I've read the FAA Risk Management book, etc, but I have to admit I can only take reading so many of these a week before I start to wonder how beneficial it really is to my personal outlook on flying.

So...although I think you will likely get a lot of flack for your question - I don't think it is necessarily a bad question to ask.
 
One other aspect to this. POA is one of the first places to pop up when one is considering GA. I kept googling questions when I was considering starting and this site was almost always on top of search results. The reason for mentioning this is while the "let's all learn from this" aspect is real and important, non GA folks doing random research may get a slightly warped view of how safe or unsafe GA is.

Would it make sense to have a "members only" forum for dissecting accidents?
 
You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.

--Sam Levenson
 
BrianNC said:
Grand Funk was my favorite band at one time. Saw them in the early '70s at Atlanta Stadium.
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Mine too, still are one of my favs, although like a lot of 70s bands they tour separately. The singer/guitarist tours with his band (Mark Farner) while the other two original members tour as Grand Funk. Mark Farner going to be in Montgomery in August and I have my tickets. They should be in the R&R Hall of Fame too.
 
mscard88 said:
Mine too, still are one of my favs, although like a lot of 70s bands they tour separately. The singer/guitarist tours with his band (Mark Farner) while the other two original members tour as Grand Funk. Mark Farner going to be in Montgomery in August and I have my tickets. They should be in the R&R Hall of Fame too.
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If you listen to Mark (there are some videos on Youtube where he talks about the split), one of the reasons they don't get back together is because he talks about God and Jesus. They told him one time when getting back together they didn't want him to mention God at all. Mark also says that Don took care of business matters and one day he came to Mark telling him he needed to sign some papers. Mark trusted Don and he said he didn't realize that what he was doing was signing over the rights to the Grand Funk name to Don and Mel. That's why Mark can't use the name now.
 
Better question is how many people constantly reconsider flying because of all the crash reports? I for one prefer the head in the sand approach. I don't really want to know about them. Why? Because the more I rad, the less I am willing to fly.
 
BrianNC said:
If you listen to Mark (there are some videos on Youtube where he talks about the split), one of the reasons they don't get back together is because he talks about God and Jesus. They told him one time when getting back together they didn't want him to mention God at all. Mark also says that Don took care of business matters and one day he came to Mark telling him he needed to sign some papers. Mark trusted Don and he said he didn't realize that what he was doing was signing over the rights to the Grand Funk name to Don and Mel. That's why Mark can't use the name now.
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That's super sleazy on the part of Don and Mel. Wow.
 
BrianNC said:
If you listen to Mark (there are some videos on Youtube where he talks about the split), one of the reasons they don't get back together is because he talks about God and Jesus. They told him one time when getting back together they didn't want him to mention God at all. Mark also says that Don took care of business matters and one day he came to Mark telling him he needed to sign some papers. Mark trusted Don and he said he didn't realize that what he was doing was signing over the rights to the Grand Funk name to Don and Mel. That's why Mark can't use the name now.
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Yep, all true. Mark had a "religious' band for awhile. Billy Powell from Skynyrd was in it too, after the Skynyrd plane crash. Boys are in their late 60s now, be nice if they could be civil. Don't think they'd ever get back together again though.
 
UngaWunga said:
then trying to find blame without any info.
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This is the part that I think sucks so badly. I'd put the thread on ignore but then I wouldn't see the resurrection when the NTSB report is released. That's the only part that I'm typically interested in.

What would be interesting to evaluate is how often the peanut gallery's blame game is actually right. I doubt anyone is THAT bored though.
 
Zeldman said:
Have Paul and Ringo ever made amends?
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I can't tell if you're making a joke or not, so to answer seriously Paul and Ringo are the best of friends. They did the 50th anniversary of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan tribute together. Play on each other's albums, etc.
 
The first concert I attended was GFR and Bloodrock. I was 14.

Bloodrock had a popular uplifting single about GA. :D
 
3393RP said:
The first concert I attended was GFR and Bloodrock. I was 14.

Bloodrock had a popular uplifting single about GA. :D
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There was a concert at Lake Spivey south of Atlanta in the early 70s, Grand Funk, Bloodrock and Chakra. I had several Bloodrock albums. I really liked them. Of course the are mainly known for DOA (I assume your 'uplifting single' lol) but they had a lot of rocking stuff and good guitar playing.

I was 12 and my first concert was Vanilla Fudge and the Amboy Dukes (Ted Nugent on guitar before he was known) at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. I've thought about before how no way that happens today. My dad taking me downtown and dropping me off for a concert. But that was no big deal back then.
 
That must have been the same tour I saw, it was 1971 and as I said I was fourteen. Times have definitely changed.

Just like you, my mom dropped off me and a friend at Tingley Coliseum on the New Mexico State Fair grounds and picked us up afterwards.

My mom was the greatest. Starting when I was thirteen she would drive all the way across town and down I-25 on Sunday mornings to drop me off at Albuquerque Dragway.
 
Zeldman said:
Have Paul and Ringo ever made amends?
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Oh yeah. Heard awhile back they were gonna make some music together. They both tour with their respective bands. Ringo's band has a whose who of player from othe big groups, like Greg Rollie from Santana, guitarist from Toto, etc.
 
BrianNC said:
I can't tell if you're making a joke or not, so to answer seriously Paul and Ringo are the best of friends. They did the 50th anniversary of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan tribute together. Play on each other's albums, etc.
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Oh good. Last I heard about the Beatles was Paul threw Ringo out of his house and there was a lot of animosity about that. But that was something like 1970 or so. I haven't paid attention since then. Then when George was on his death bed Ringo offered to cancel the rest of his tour just to spend time with George, but George told Ringo to stay with his tour.

I was only 11 or 12 when the Beatles broke up but I remember my sister having a cow when she heard about it.
 
jkaduk said:
Creepiest song ever. Great, but creepy.
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One of Bloodrock's members quit the band and went to law school. He's been practicing law for around forty years here in Dallas, proving there actually can be life after rock n' roll.

:D
 
Hang 4 said:
One other aspect to this. POA is one of the first places to pop up when one is considering GA. I kept googling questions when I was considering starting and this site was almost always on top of search results. The reason for mentioning this is while the "let's all learn from this" aspect is real and important, non GA folks doing random research may get a slightly warped view of how safe or unsafe GA is.

Would it make sense to have a "members only" forum for dissecting accidents?
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I think this makes more sense than having them mixed in all over the place like they are now.
 
Discussing accidents publicly doesn't bother me. I just find it interesting that people seem to want to post accidents first, asap.
 
Quite a bit of online accident threads are just to consolidate the information that comes out slowly over time into one place, saving people time if they’re interested for whatever reasons in a particular accident because they fly the type or similar missions, or whatever.

Someone runs across the news, posts it. Someone else runs across an update with useful info, posts it. Eventually a year later someone grabs the NTSB report, posts it.

Unlike car crashes, which are so commonplace nobody in the general driving community really bothers analyzing them anymore, pilots tend to follow crashes and attempt to learn from them.

You won’t see the GenPop out booking time at the skid pad after they read about someone losing control of their car in the rain. You will find pilots who’ll double down efforts with a CFI if they think their missions and skill set match the dead pilot’s, trying to get a little better at this aviation thing.

Not too many people congratulate teenagers when they get their driver’s licenses that they now have a “license to learn”.
 
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