I'm not so sure about flying being dangerous.

John Baker

John Baker

Final Approach
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John Baker
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I thought of this after seeing my doctor yesterday morning for a check up.
He made a statement that went something like; " I don't do what you do", in reference to my flying when we we chatting about our hobbies. His implication being that flying is dangerous.

There are a host of things we encounter that can kill or maim us everyday of our lives. The more we venture from our homes, the more we are adding to the risk, even though there are plenty of risks right in our own homes.

So just what percentage to our daily risk factors does flying an airplane add? If we changed it to a monthly equation, considering the number of hours we fly and added to the number of hours we are awake and moving about each month, just what would flying add to our monthly risk factor?

It almost seems that flying is such a small add on to our monthly risks that there is hardly any risk at all, as compared to the other dangers we face.

What are our chances of meeting our end in a hospital or hospice, with tubes and catheters stuck in us, while strangers feed us pablum and talk baby talk to us, " How are WE today?" What is it, about 80 or 90 percent?

If we flew every day from here on out, what are our chances of ending our days in a pile of twisted, smoking rubble, what five percent? Ten percent? I think it's probably more like one or two percent, if that.

John
 
Ball-park figure, average pilot doing average pilot stuff in the average proportions, rounding off, you'll die about every 100,000 hours of flight.

So if you're a 1000hr lifetime GA pilot, there's 100% chance that you will die of something, and about a 1% chance that it will be in a GA crash.

Of course, for these purposes, an hour of flight isn't a logbook hour, it can just as easily be a backseat hour. If you're a CFI and rack up a lot of hours in instruction, those hours are safer. If you do a lot of cross-country travel, those hours are less safe.
-harry
 
I've used the quote, "Aviation isn't inherently dangerous, just unforgiving of mistakes". However, the ease of which one can make a mistake in aviation is surprising, sufficiently so that some fo the best aviators, like Ken Fossett and Scotty Crossfield, have perished in airplane accidents. Something in which it is that easy to make a mistake, is indeed dangerous.
 
Flying or motorcycles aren't dangerous. Crashing is dangerous. Don't crash and you'll be ok for the most part.

However over a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

Too many people nowadays overfocus on danger and risks and death and being safe no matter what. They justify to themselves on why they (and you) should just exist and not actually do anything. They're afraid to live.
 
fgcason said:
Too many people nowadays overfocus on danger and risks and death and being safe no matter what. They justify to themselves on why they (and you) should just exist and not actually do anything. They're afraid to live.
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It is sad. Why has our society become obsessed with absolute safety? What has changed? Is it media hysteria? Lifespan increases? Afluence? Torts? I just don't know, but the preponderence of people that are safety obsessed to the point of overpaying for ridiculous safety requriements seems to be high and still rising.
 
Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I'll choose option A, thank you.
 
Planes aren't dangerous, planes are hazardous, pilots are dangerous.
 
Prior to getting my PPL I crunched some numbers. The GA fatality risk ended up being between motorcycle riding and recreational boating. That was acceptable to me. I still don't understand why life insurance companies exclude coverage for pilots. They should also exclude coverage for motorcyclists and crazy fishermen that venture from shore!
 
ebacon said:
Prior to getting my PPL I crunched some numbers. The GA fatality risk ended up being between motorcycle riding and recreational boating. That was acceptable to me. I still don't understand why life insurance companies exclude coverage for pilots. They should also exclude coverage for motorcyclists and crazy fishermen that venture from shore!
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Not all of them do. When I went to work for Cal Dive and I filled out all the "benefits" questionnaires they couldn't get me approved because of the pilot exemption. So the gal in charge of benefits shopped around found a company that not only had no problem with it, they were actually significantly cheaper and had better benefits (including full dental, no deductible office visits, no "provider list" no co pay prescriptions and a $1000 max deductible on major medical) and was less expensive, so she switched the whole company over.
 
Henning said:
Not all of them do. When I went to work for Cal Dive and I filled out all the "benefits" questionnaires they couldn't get me approved because of the pilot exemption. So the gal in charge of benefits shopped around found a company that not only had no problem with it, they were actually significantly cheaper and had better benefits (including full dental, no deductible office visits, no "provider list" no co pay prescriptions and a $1000 max deductible on major medical) and was less expensive, so she switched the whole company over.
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I had my choice of life insurance policies, though because I was a pilot they were more expensive. Not an expansive choice, but choices nonetheless.

I had a devil of a time finding a policy that would cover me for less than highway robbery due to the fact that I had only recently retired from high-altitude mountaineering and because I am a passenger in government helicopters.
 
When I started flight instructing (about 15 years ago) I gathered as much information as I could find and crunched my own numbers as best I could.

The statement that started with was the phrase "The most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport." While I not longer have the numbers here is what I recall I determined.

As best I could I tried to compare 1 hour of flying to 1 hour of another activity. I think I was comparing Fatality Rates, as opposed to accident or injury rates.

As I recall the Airlines actually do better than Driving in General so for airline travel the above statement is probably true.

GA as a whole does much worse that Driving.

GA as a whole was about the same a riding a Motorcyle.

GA if you eliminate low flying and bad weather accidents is about the same as driving.

So my final determination is most GA accidents are pilot error, so you the pilot are able to control how safe or dangerous it is more than many other activities. If you don't fly low and don't fly in bad weather you are just about as likely to die driving to the airport in your car as you are in the airplane.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
With all respect to doctors and what wisdom they might have as individuals, this reminds me of a lecture I once got from a doctor when he was watching me slice a bagel in half (on edge, with a good sharp bread knife; get it started, then free hand on top of the blade as I cut through... I was working part-time at a lunch counter back then):
"You know, I've stitched up a lot of patients who almost lost a finger cutting a bagel that way..."

Without looking up, I said "Funny thing, Doc- the only time I ever cut my hand cutting a bagel was the one time I tried it with the bagel flat." :wink2:

That shut him up... good thing, too, or I'd have had to tell him "I don't tell you how to handle a scalpel; don't tell me how to cut a bagel." :D
That's the trouble with most people who have very refined expertise in a given field- they often believe they are experts in everything. :wink2:

I don't have the same kind of accidents as most, I guess... only time I ever cut myself on a meat slicer was when it was off and I was cleaning it. And one time I was walking down the street and in an instant, got hog-tied by a passing plastic shopping bag and fell flat on my face... before I could get my hands out of my pockets. :rolleyes:
As for flying vs. driving- just about every time I'm behind the wheel, somebody or something scares the living bejeezus out of me before it's over. Like most motorists, I've had some very close calls.
Can't say the same about flying; not by a long shot.
 
I wish I had time to worry about this but I have to go work on my airplane. Need to go flying!
 
Anthony said:
It is sad. Why has our society become obsessed with absolute safety? What has changed? Is it media hysteria? Lifespan increases? Afluence? Torts? I just don't know, but the preponderence of people that are safety obsessed to the point of overpaying for ridiculous safety requriements seems to be high and still rising.
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Just a theory in general: Fear of being alone. People can't even go to the store without talking on the phone constantly to someone else. Two minutes of disconnect from other people and they start getting stressed. I think people are afraid of anything that's not prepackaged threat due to their fear of being rejected by society. They've been programmed all their lives to live a fixed acceptable lifestyle to social standards. Look at everything around you and I mean step back and look at it objectively. The acceptable standards is a nice car, a house, a generic respectable job, relationships with the tv image standards of what looks good and is acceptable to date, marriage, kids, do routine stuff, be a consumer for prepackaged items. Step out of the norm or you're a weirdo and weirdo's are not accepted. If you're not accepted, you're alone and people are terrified of that. Do that for a few generations and the people on the edge are filtered out and the prepackaged people become the standards. From what I can see, the current obsession for excess safety has been going on since about the late 1970's.

If you do anything unusual that's not prepackaged, people look at you like you're completely insane. Seriously fruitcake insane. Then they go on and do their wonderous never done before things..that is just like all the other cookie cutter people around them.


Head First. Feet Second. Safety Third.
<--- Caractacus Potts
 
Anthony said:
It is sad. Why has our society become obsessed with absolute safety? What has changed? Is it media hysteria? Lifespan increases? Afluence? Torts?
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I think in the past (before my time), we either didn't know the dangers or just couldn't do anything practical to mitigate them. Now we know many of the dangers and have the ability to try and mitigate them. So much so that we're valuing quantity of life over quality.

OTOH, since I've realized early on that everything is trying to kill me, I've chosen to accept that possibility and enjoy myself until my luck runs out. In theory any movement beyond a slow walk is deadly, at a height of 5'10" a simple slip or fall could cause death via cranial containment failure.
 
steingar said:
However, the ease of which one can make a mistake in aviation is surprising, sufficiently so that some fo the best aviators, like Ken Fossett and Scotty Crossfield, have perished in airplane accidents. Something in which it is that easy to make a mistake, is indeed dangerous.
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Not to be too disrespectful of the dead, but in one case you have a distinct case of pilot error (Crossfield took an aircraft not capable of surviving the event, directly into a thunderstorm didn't he?) and one with questionable judgement even before taking off (no one knew where Fossett was going, which granted is not huge but could have at least helped searchers).

I would contend that "the best" aviators don't do either of those things.

Love both those pilots and their exploits, but their last flights are sadly both good examples of what not to do.

That is the most interesting thing about aviation. You can fly 10,000 hours at Mach 3 with your hair on fire and be complacent just one time and it'll bite you square in the ass.

Most of us get away with a few days of flying when we don't bring our A-game, but if you're the type of person who brings their B-game more often than not, you'll be quite dead, soon enough.

I definitely believe those guys brought their A-game more often than not.

But...

Aviation is amongst a few endeavors that requires such a high level of care every time you strap in. It is my belief that many people who consider aviation "dangerous" might know something about their own ability to bring their A-Game every time.

Thus, those people may be 100% right... for themselves.

Alternatively those of us who assess aviation as "safe" could be wrong if we're bad at self-assessment and/or don't heed our peer's and instructor's assessments of our flying. ;)

The longer you fly, hopefully the better you get at that self-assessment game in your head, but it's a hard instrument to calibrate.

I've cancelled a flight or two when I realized I'd made one or two really silly mistakes during a pre-flight on the ground. "If you're doing stupid **** in the hangar, Nate... You'd better put the airplane keys away and go home today. It's not your day to be flying."

I feel for the pros who have much bigger outside pressures (like keeping their jobs) on a "bad brain day" to go flying anyway. Some have other crewmembers to help make up the brainpower difference, but some have to mentally "reset", start over, and go climb up on the horse.

My hat's off to those who can do that and survive.
 
denverpilot said:
Not to be too disrespectful of the dead, but in one case you have a distinct case of pilot error (Crossfield took an aircraft not capable of surviving the event, directly into a thunderstorm didn't he?) and one with questionable judgement even before taking off (no one knew where Fossett was going, which granted is not huge but could have at least helped searchers). .
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I think it was Sigmund Freud who said; "There is no such thing as an accident."

Myself, I'm inclined to agree with that. I think both of the above mentioned pilots were way to far experienced to have met their demises via an aircraft wreck. I have always been suspicious in both those cases.

I think they wanted to die, they just didn't know it, or perhaps they did.

I do know that our subconscious minds are more in control of our day to day activities than most of us think is possible. Driving to work for example, we stop at red lights, stop signs, crosswalks, We obey speed laws without ever consciously seeing the speed limit signs, automatically, without thinking about it at all. We turn and walk away from people we know to be a threat, without even being aware of them, we just do it.

Whoever it was who said it, was spot on.

John
 
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steingar said:
However, the ease of which one can make a mistake in aviation is surprising, sufficiently so that some fo the best aviators, like Ken Fossett and Scotty Crossfield, have perished in airplane accidents.
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Who's Ken Fossett? :dunno:
 
Sorry folks you can't pretend your way into a lower risk category. We all make those boneheaded mistakes in the air. We'd never make the mistake on the ground but in the air we do. All those 'simple' mistake dead pilots are the same as me and you. You aren't smarter with cooler nerves and better judgement you just haven't been judged the same yet. Give it time.
 
mantakos said:
Ball-park figure, average pilot doing average pilot stuff in the average proportions, rounding off, you'll die about every 100,000 hours of flight.

So if you're a 1000hr lifetime GA pilot, there's 100% chance that you will die of something, and about a 1% chance that it will be in a GA crash.

Of course, for these purposes, an hour of flight isn't a logbook hour, it can just as easily be a backseat hour. If you're a CFI and rack up a lot of hours in instruction, those hours are safer. If you do a lot of cross-country travel, those hours are less safe.
-harry
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You obviously haven't spent much time instructing pre-solo primary students! :D:D
 
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."-- Hellen Keller

Frankly, after practicing landings on a gusty afternoon today . . . I feel like I ADDED ten years to my life.

Today, I pitied the groundpounders who would never know the joy of bringing a plane onto a runway in less than ideal conditions. I don't envy the safety-obsessed, fear-consumed people who see a dragon around every corner. Life is for living. Live it! :yes:
 
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Some say that speed kills. I happen to believe that it's the abrupt stops that do the killing.
 
mantakos said:
Of course, for these purposes, an hour of flight isn't a logbook hour, it can just as easily be a backseat hour. If you're a CFI and rack up a lot of hours in instruction, those hours are safer. If you do a lot of cross-country travel, those hours are less safe.
-harry
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That is probably one of the least accurate assessments of aviation I've heard.
 
mantakos said:
I'd be interested in hearing why you think that.

What I said is drawn directly from accident statistics.
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Do the statistics take into account number of flight hours? I doubt that.

The majority of flight hours that exist are XC. More XC flight hours per day exist on commercial jets alone than most of us will obtain in our entire flying careers. It is logical, then, that there would be a higher percentage of total accidents that are on XCs vs. training (which make up a relatively small percentage of total flight hours).

However, XC flight itself is very safe overall. Most instructors seem to agree that students are out to try to kill them, and the number of "OH ****" moments as an instructor are significantly higher percentage wise than doing XCs as PIC.

The FAA agrees with me, since maneuvering and time in the pattern are considered significantly more dangerous than cruise/XC.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Do the statistics take into account number of flight hours? I doubt that.
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My response is true of the GA pilot population as a whole. If you are above average, then what's true of the average might not be true for you. Do note that half of us are below average.
The majority of flight hours that exist are XC. More XC flight hours per day exist on commercial jets...
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I'm speaking solely of GA pilots. There's a dramatic difference between GA safety and airline safety, and my assumption is that when we say "flying" we mean GA flying.
However, XC flight itself is very safe overall...
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Ok, though we don't really have a standard for how safe something has to be to be called "very safe". We can compare it to other activities, and XC GA flight is less safe than, for instance, GA flight training, it's less safe than driving, and it's far less safe than airline travel.

That doesn't stop me from doing it, and I do consider it safe enough to do per my own standards.
Most instructors seem to agree that students are out to try to kill them...
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And yet the statistics show that they don't succeed as often as XC GA pilots do on their own.
The FAA agrees with me, since maneuvering and time in the pattern are considered significantly more dangerous than cruise/XC.
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The statistics I'm quoting come straight from the Nall report which is drawn from the NTSB database. The FAA doesn't have much to do with this.

Note that we're talking about the purpose of the flight, not the phase of flight. A XC flight entails a takeoff, maneuvering, cruise, and landing just as a training flight does.
-harry
 
Henning said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
It is sad. Why has our society become obsessed with absolute safety? What has changed? Is it media hysteria? .


Fear of dying often caused by religious training.
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Given that our society has moved away from organized religion over the last 40-50 years, maybe you have that backwards.
 
When I go in for my physical every year I get the same spiel. My doctor tells me that flying is dangerous, riding my motorcycle is dangerous, on and on. When I lost my medical my family doctor was almost relieved that I was not flying. My wife has a turbo charged Pontiac Solstice, and my doctor is concerned about driving around in that as well. It appears to me that the more active you are, the more dangerous your life style. However, just sit at home watching TV brings on a whole new host of negative consequences. I think that it is just one of those no win situations, and I choose active life style over recliner and TV.

On the same note, I ride my bicycle to work every day. It is eight miles round trip. I have been doing this now for three weeks. I have had more close calls on that bicycle than I have in any other of my activities. And it isn't just cars, it is dogs, cracks in the pavement, rocks and gravel, and even sticks laying on the bike path. It is insane how dangerous riding a bicycle is.
 
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Maxmosbey said:
Why would religion make one more fearful of dying? I would think that it would be just the opposite.
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people are terrified of being alone. religion tells you that you're important and you'll live forever. reality tells you that you're nothing and will die and simply cease to exist. people have been told repeatedly for a long time that they're the most important thing ever to the point they believe it. religion is a reality disconnect from what is observable around people. to die without the unconditional reassurance of living forever and not be alone scares them.
 
There is no doubt that flying in small aircraft is significantly more dangerous than most common activities.

Can you mitigate the risk? Sure. Fly smart, which means flying within your capabilities, not getting caught by unsuitable weather, not running out of gas, maintaining the aircraft, etc. But, even if you do all of those things, there are plenty of situations in flying where if <for instance> the engine quits at the wrong time and place, you will be in a world of hurt and may or may not survive the outcome.

A good example was the grass strip I visited today. Departing the field, there is a period where if the engine quits, you're going into the trees.

Alternately, in any given flight there is the risk of midair, control failure, physical incapacitation, etc., none of which is completely within your control and each of which has a significant chance of a fatal outcome.

Those things can't be avoided if you want to participate in flying. You have to evaluate your tolerance for risk and your ability to mitigate that risk, then ask yourself if you're comfortable with the risk/reward comparison. If you're not comfortable with it, you probably shouldn't fly.
 
fgcason said:
people are terrified of being alone. religion tells you that you're important and you'll live forever. reality tells you that you're nothing and will die and simply cease to exist. people have been told repeatedly for a long time that they're the most important thing ever to the point they believe it. religion is a reality disconnect from what is observable around people. to die without the unconditional reassurance of living forever and not be alone scares them.
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I am going to have to disagree with this, and while not wanting to get too esoteric, you really need to define what reality really is. In a universe where we as humans know very little, can not scientifically tell where or how we were created, nor can tell how, or who, what, or why the universe was created, what is reality?

Do you really think there possibly isn't another set of rules beyond the laws of physics we encounter on Earth or the world/worlds we can see and touch?

Didn't you ever watch the original Star Trek? :D
 
Anthony said:
I am going to have to disagree with this, and while not wanting to get too esoteric, you really need to define what reality really is. In a universe where we as humans know very little, can not scientifically tell where or how we were created, nor can tell how, or who, what, or why the universe was created, what is reality?

Do you really think there possibly isn't another set of rules beyond the laws of physics we encounter on Earth or the world/worlds we can see and touch?

Didn't you ever watch the original Star Trek? :D
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I'm defining reality as what is reasonably observable and repeatable observations in the world, not in one's mind with no proof to the contrary.

The last I heard, Star Trek was, um, science fiction, not real - even though people now have cellphones (communicators) and some people are convinced they are vulcans or klingons, not much unlike some people who think they are fish. (funny how all those unrelated completely different biosphere aliens look human with minor variations and breathe earth oxygen without a problem)
 
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