graham@orca.UUCP (Graham Bromley) (12/13/84)
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.
For 1., I have the impression that the typical light plane
e.g. a 152 or 172 is pretty reliable mechanically, but I wonder
how well the typical airplane is maintained. I'd hate to think
a mechanic hadn't done something quite right in a plane I was
flying. Quite a few disasters with big jets have been caused by
sloppy maintenance. Someone on the net recently mentioned a
pilot who had one flap drop while he was flying, and this
occurred again after it was "fixed". That kind of thing sounds
very scary to me. (I'm amazed it was controllable). So: how
reliable and how well maintained is the average airplane?
For 2., well everyone likes to think they are the best and
could handle just anything. It's the same on the roads. However
we who realize that most of us must by definition be of about
average ability need to be more realistic. Is the average
lightplane pilot adequately trained to cope with serious,
possibly multiple emergencies the way military and airline
jocks presumably are? Surely it would cost too much, and
besides you would need those very expensive simulators. Sure,
some guys can handle their control surfaces locking up while
flying at 50 feet inverted. But how many times do you hear of
a fatal accident involving something as simple as engine failure in
a single? They just keep hauling back on the stick (or wheel)
'till they run out of knots, then down they go (real steep).
So: has the average pilot really been trained to cope?
For 3., I read a lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal
(of all places) on this subject a while back. It said that
the average lightplane is flimsy at best, having very little
in the way of an impact resistant cabin. Obviously you can't
expect to survive hitting the side of a mountain at 150kt,
but do the designers of these airplanes really consider
survivability? Apparently Beechcraft once built a twin to
survive almost anything, but the plane wasn't a success. Too
heavy I would guess.
Any comments guys? I'd be interested to hear from all
you experienced pilots out there.doug@terak.UUCP (12/17/84)
[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