How safe is flying?

Sport Pilot said:
I have to say, the Mortuary forum I belong to is not as lively as POA. You guys are a hoot.
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Maybe you should try offering low-cost burial plans for CFIs and their students to liven things up a bit...
 
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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Mark Twain
 
Challenged said:
I decided to purchase The Killing Zone based on a recommendation here. The author says: "...a person is 10.9 times more likely to be involved in a fatal general aviation aircraft accident than in a fatal car accident."
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And he backs it by real stats. Not to scare off anyone, but there is no doubt it’s risky. But again I know a lot of people who died prematurely and didn’t even see the inside of a GA plane


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In my opinion (no actual facts to back it up) GA flying is about as safe as riding motorcycles on the street. Flying would be safer than motorcycles if it wasn't for that gravity thing. :)
 
WannFly said:
And he backs it by real stats. Not to scare off anyone, but there is no doubt it’s risky. But again I know a lot of people who died prematurely and didn’t even see the inside of a GA plane


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I had a brother in law who thought I was nuts for the things I did. He was so risk averse that he wouldn’t even ride a roller coaster.

Died of cancer before he reached 50.
 
jsterner said:
In my opinion (no actual facts to back it up) GA flying is about as safe as riding motorcycles on the street. Flying would be safer than motorcycles if it wasn't for that gravity thing. :)
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When we fly we are in charge of our destiny. On a motorcycle we have less say. I doubt there are many 'dead right' pilots; however, there are plenty of 'dead right' motorcycle riders.
 
Though I am a mortician, I have advanced training and certified in craniofacial reconstruction. Basically, if it’s a closed casket, they call me.

As far as flight safety, I did not feel confident on Tuesday as I was flying. Even though I have already passed my written and studied aviation for months, I felt as though all the information was lost.

Coming home after the flight training, I felt intimidated and overloaded with everything. I sure hope it gets better over time.
 

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Intimidated and overloaded is normal. It will get better over time.
 
Sport Pilot said:
Though I am a mortician, I have advanced training and certified in craniofacial reconstruction. Basically, if it’s a closed casket, they call me.

As far as flight safety, I did not feel confident on Tuesday as I was flying. Even though I have already passed my written and studied aviation for months, I felt as though all the information was lost.

Coming home after the flight training, I felt intimidated and overloaded with everything. I sure hope it gets better over time.
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No reason you should feel confident at this stage. Be patient and let it come to you.
 
I met a vet few months back, he has a little over zillion hrs in all kinds of fighter planes, he told me one thing that I hope I never forget. His words: “son, the day u tell yourself, I’ve got this , don’t take off. Most likely that flight will kill you.”




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WannFly said:
I met a vet few months back, he has a little over zillion hrs in all kinds of fighter planes, he told me one thing that I hope I never forget. His words: “son, the day u tell yourself, I’ve got this , don’t take off. Most likely that flight will kill you.”
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Never ride with a pilot who knows no fear.
 
Best way to fly is to say, “hold my beer, watch this”
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Pretty broad statement from one year of data. As one who just recently had an ADS-B traffic alert save my pink butt, I disagree wholeheartedly with your premise. Secondly, you seem to disregard the possibility that having FIS -B may just prevent the aforementioned blunder into hazardous weather.
ADS-B enhances situational awareness. Situational awareness saves lives. Therefore ADS-B saves lives. Syllogistically rather than statistically speaking.
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How did it save you? Not being a jerk, but did it, really? Or maybe just prevent a near-ish miss, instead? If it saves even one life. . . we wasted a lot of money for a woefully inadequate ROI.
 
easik said:
Statistically flying is actually more safe than driving a car.
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Shawn said:
Most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport.
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"General aviation pilots frequently used to tell themselves, and their passengers, that the drive to the airport was the most dangerous part of the trip. They wanted to believe that flying their piston-engine general aviation airplane was safer than driving. When it became known that the fatality rate per mile in a general aviation airplane was seven times that of driving, they had a very hard time accepting that reality."

Sky Kings: Let's Quit Talking about Safety
Such discussion is often self-deceptive.
John King

https://www.flyingmag.com/sky-kings-lets-quit-talking-about-safety
 
Sport Pilot said:
Coming home after the flight training, I felt intimidated and overloaded with everything. I sure hope it gets better over time.
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It does. Flying you get to drink from the fire hose of knowledge and at the same time learn a whole new set of motor skills and the initial feeling is often of being overloaded, behind, and trying to keep up.

Eventually the muscles do the right thing without conscious thought about most of it and then the brain has a few more cycles available to think about what the airplane and muscles are doing.

Even that isn’t done getting better at the typical number of hours for a Private checkride. Couple hundred more hours and it gets even easier.

For us weekend warriors once you hit a few hundred hours in type or even a specific aircraft, you start to feel like you “wear” that airplane more than ride in it. You notice tiny little details about it. Sounds. A particular behavior in pitch or roll. Control pressures to put it right where you want it.

It’s subtly “uncomfortable” on the low hour numbers, even though you’re enjoying the heck out of it, because you’re having to consciously think about your body movements. But it gets rapidly better, sometimes with a frustrating learning plateau or two. Just depends on the person.
 
BrianNC said:
"General aviation pilots frequently used to tell themselves, and their passengers, that the drive to the airport was the most dangerous part of the trip. They wanted to believe that flying their piston-engine general aviation airplane was safer than driving.
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I don't wanna believe it...I want my passengers to believe it!
 
I suppose one of the reasons my girl is so worried is because she knows I read “The Idiot’s Guide to Sport Flying”.
 
Sundancer said:
How did it save you? Not being a jerk, but did it, really? Or maybe just prevent a near-ish miss, instead? If it saves even one life. . . we wasted a lot of money for a woefully inadequate ROI.
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Aircraft descending into pattern at departure end. I was turning crosswind, my wing blocked my view. ADS-B alerted and pointed +200 and where to look. Had I continued to climb, there would have been a mid-air. And if the one life is your own, the investment is priceless. So yes, don't be a jerk.
 
I haven't read every word of this thread, so maybe I missed this important point.

ALL statistics regarding the GA fleet are very suspect, borderline invalid. Why?

We have no good data about how many hours the GA fleet flies per annum, and in what conditions. So statments like: "All GA flying is safer than/is more dangerous than riding [insert vehicle of choice]" are statistically invalid. Period. We can guess, estimate, etc. even use Ouija Boards but the answer is statistically invalid.

I believe that if my plane is well maintained, carefully inspected, and I fly in the center of the air (away from the edges of the air) and within my, and my plane's, limits it is safe enough for my risk parameters. So I fly. You get to make your own decision, every time you arrive at the airport.

-Skip
 
Skip Miller said:
ALL statistics regarding the GA fleet are very suspect, borderline invalid. Why?
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The same is pretty much true about miles ridden on motorcycles, etc.
So, yea, comparing guesswork numbers to guesswork numbers gets pretty shaky.

I've spent quite a bit of time looking at accident data for LSA vs not, and and can conclude that things like the economy have more effect on the number of accidents than things like medical certificates or FAA safety initiatives.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Aircraft descending into pattern at departure end. I was turning crosswind, my wing blocked my view. ADS-B alerted and pointed +200 and where to look. Had I continued to climb, there would have been a mid-air. And if the one life is your own, the investment is priceless. So yes, don't be a jerk.
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You were there, I wasn't, so maybe/maybe you might have hit. No way to know for sure, of course. Maybe you would have been in the very small mid-air stats. But probably not. Eight billion+ $$$$, likely not counting FAA staff costs and aircraft owner costs; yeah, other benefits accrue for traffic managemt, especially for FAA, but mid-air avoidance isn't one of them. The safety aspect is a crock, a selling point easy to articulate, but not substantive. Real world, you spend to reduce risk, but not to completly eliminate it, else the last few percentage point imorovement costs you exponentially more.
 
Skip Miller said:
...We have no good data about how many hours the GA fleet flies per annum, and in what conditions. So statments like: "All GA flying is safer than/is more dangerous than riding [insert vehicle of choice]" are statistically invalid. Period. We can guess, estimate, etc. even use Ouija Boards but the answer is statistically invalid....
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Valid/invalid is an example of the fallacy of the excluded middle. I agree that accident rates are not as accurate as we might like, but data don't have to be perfect in order to be useful. Take the comparative risk numbers that John King cited, for example: How likely is it that the hours-and-miles data are off by more than a factor of seven? That's what it would take for the claim that "the drive to the airport is the most dangerous part of the trip" to be true. Furthermore, that claim is not based on inaccurate data, it's based on NO data, yet no one questions the statistical validity of that.

In addition, I don't think anyone said that "all" GA flying is unsafe. If that were true, then risk management in our personal flying would serve no purpose. In my opinion, the purpose of looking at the imperfect data that's available is to shake us out of our complacency enough to get ourselves to make better decisions about risk.
 
The other thing missing in this is that the risk in driving depends heavily on where you live and drive. I4 in Orlando is one of the deadliest routes in the country and I drive it every day. I think I’m much safer in the air than driving on I4, and taking I4 to the airport is more dangerous than the subsequent flight.
 
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