Velocity 6 place down

455 Bravo Uniform said:
A pilot is part of the entire airplane system. If it takes a certain incremental proficiency to fly a certain plane, then that’s an additional risk factor of that particular plane. We can take the pilot out of the picture for discussions, but that’s just not reality when real blood & guts are involved in the accident statistics.
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And when the pilot is not part of the equation, I am not sure I have that much interest in being the pilot.

Tim
 
MRC01 said:
Yet the fact remains, the overall likelihood of engine failure in a twin is higher than in a single.
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I would like to see where those facts can be viewed.

Does that mean a V8 car engine will fail twice as much as a 4 cylinder?

I have had 3 partial power losses in a single when I was flying in Alaska. Fortunately I was close enough to a landing area to land without further incident. Most lower 48 pilots would call it an off airport landing, except these areas were designated landing areas.

One time in New Mexico flying a twin I shut down an engine due to loss of oil pressure. At night while climbing through 11,000 msl. I turned around and landed. The engine had about 10 hours on it.

When I was flying in the southwest US for a living, we did not fly singles at night for a reason.

I will agree that lack of current training in a twin is a recipe for disaster, especially during the takeoff phase. Then again, the same can be said for a single engine.
 
Zeldman said:
I would like to see where those facts can be viewed.

Does that mean a V8 car engine will fail twice as much as a 4 cylinder?
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No. A V8 has 2x as many cylinders but likely not 2x the number of parts, so cylinders and any parts duplicated per cylinder will have the probability for twice the failures. Overall, V8 and 4 cylinders will have different failure probabilities because they are not the same engine.

It is the case that if you have something with a probability of failure = X, having two identical somethings will have a probability of failure of 2x.
 
szwinger said:
It is the case that if you have something with a probability of failure = X, having two identical somethings will have a probability of failure of 2x.
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That is true as far as it goes. As lottery ticket sales will attest, humans are terrible at intuiting the probabilities of risk. At a certain level, every outcome is equally likely -- it's either going to happen or it will not happen. The real issue is: what will the outcome be if one engine on a single fails in flight? And if one engine on a twin? Both events place a premium on pilot skill, but in different ways. The twin gives options to its pilot that are not available to the pilot of the single, but also makes demands of the pilot to derive the benefit of those options.
 
Zeldman said:
Does that mean a V8 car engine will fail twice as much as a 4 cylinder?
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szwinger said:
No. A V8 has 2x as many cylinders but likely not 2x the number of parts, so cylinders and any parts duplicated per cylinder will have the probability for twice the failures. Overall, V8 and 4 cylinders will have different failure probabilities because they are not the same engine.

It is the case that if you have something with a probability of failure = X, having two identical somethings will have a probability of failure of 2x.
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Sorry, I forgot to add the sarcasm emoji.

I would think 4 cyl would fail more than a V8 because there is more 4 cyl on the road....:lol:
 
Tantalum said:
I don't think it's fair to attribute known proficiency deficiencies of many private multi pilots to an accident in a completely new and unconventional aircraft type. Maybe it was an engine failure that caused the crash, maybe it wasn't. But a dude in a Baron who wrecks a twin because he hasn't practiced a shut down in 35 years because it's 'hard on the engines' and gets pencil whipped flight reviews by his buddy really shouldn't be a valuable data point in the 'twins are inherently riskier designs' argument
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And this differs from single engine crashes involving pilots with various deficiencies??? Like it or not, they all get lumped together…

I’ve never done any serious study of aircraft crashes, but I did study motorcycle crashes in detail several years ago…if you ride but don’t drink alcohol, don’t speed, get properly licensed, and take regular motorcycle safety classes your odds of a crash are GREATLY diminished…but the statistics that say 1 in 200 motorcyclists will die on a bike ignore this (I think that was the number). So it’s probably more like 1 in 20 that do drink or speed etc, vs 1 in 2000 that are safe….but that 1 - 200 is for all riders, deficiencies be damned.
 
Country Flier said:
... I’ve never done any serious study of aircraft crashes, but I did study motorcycle crashes in detail several years ago…if you ride but don’t drink alcohol, don’t speed, get properly licensed, and take regular motorcycle safety classes your odds of a crash are GREATLY diminished…but the statistics that say 1 in 200 motorcyclists will die on a bike ignore this (I think that was the number). So it’s probably more like 1 in 20 that do drink or speed etc, vs 1 in 2000 that are safe….but that 1 - 200 is for all riders, deficiencies be damned.
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Chances are, if you ride motorbikes or fly airplanes, and do it long enough, you know people who have been killed doing this activity, often friends or family. Overall the risks are similar, within the same order of magnitude. And in both cases, there are a few simple things anyone can do that greatly reduce the risks. Yet one of the big differences in the risk factors between the two is asymmetry. When flying (compared to motorbiking), your fate is much more in your own hands. There are relatively fewer ways someone else can kill you.
 
Country Flier said:
And this differs from single engine crashes involving pilots with various deficiencies??? Like it or not, they all get lumped together…

I’ve never done any serious study of aircraft crashes, but I did study motorcycle crashes in detail several years ago…if you ride but don’t drink alcohol, don’t speed, get properly licensed, and take regular motorcycle safety classes your odds of a crash are GREATLY diminished…but the statistics that say 1 in 200 motorcyclists will die on a bike ignore this (I think that was the number). So it’s probably more like 1 in 20 that do drink or speed etc, vs 1 in 2000 that are safe….but that 1 - 200 is for all riders, deficiencies be damned.
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And this is exactly why GA accident statistics as a whole can be 'dubious' .. which incidentally I have been told in the past that flying a small plane can be not dissimilar from riding a motorcycle safety-wise

Still, I think multis are often unfairly maligned
 
Thinking back to fatal MC crashes that I responded to, and that and acquaintances died or were seriously injured in, they all involved one or more of the following: Alcohol, drugs, riding too fast for the road and traffic conditions, poor lane positioning, poor maintenance (tire worn down to cords), no helmet, or a beanie helmet. If you ride sober, sharp and skilled , the chances of crashing drop sharply. Add a helmet, especially full-face, and your chances of surviving a crash go way up.
 
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