I have no issue with flying commercial planes, but I guess I don't trust myself _and_ the smaller planes enough to do this.
RIP Claude, horrible way to die.
Stick and rudder skills aren't that useful with fuel exhaustion and bad weather planning. It's much easier to stay safer in a plane vs motorcycle.
I wish people treated cars and motorcycles properly, especially in the US. Until then, no motorcycles for me either :(
I encourage you to read NTSB accident reports. The work the investigators do and the reports they assemble are unparalleled. There are also good parallels to complex systems in general.
Usually accidents are due to people taking too many risks. Yes it can happen but you can prevent a lot by being a stickler for safety.
And you can put down a GA aircraft in a field easily. When I flew gliders they always taught us to constantly evaluate every field you see as a potential landing site. This behaviour is not focused on enough for powered flying IMO. My instructor would suddenly put his hands over my eyes and say "emergency, where are you putting down right now?" And not having a good answer would have you off the solo list for a week or so. It really helped keeping this in the back of the mind. I've not seen that in powered flying at all.
It's not a safe hobby if you want to have fun flying the plane.
It's like the difference between sports car enthusiasts who are proud of how long their tires and brakes last vs the ones who are proud of how short they last.
Yay, one old bold pilot.
One of my old coworkers was a retired navy captain who used to be an instructor at Top Gun and had hundreds of night carrier landings. He told me that he'd have to be forced at gunpoint to fly on a small general aviation airplane, it's just too dangerous.
Wrong, Guillemot and his family greedy, destroyed one of the most successful gaming companies in the gaming history.
If you have been following the gaming space within the last 5 years or so, it is safe to say that he won't be missed, and it opens the door for Tecent to bring the Ubisoft back to its glory if that is even possible at this stage.
I am wondering: what's the data on how safe, or unsafe, "private" planes are, e.g. compared to commercial jets?
Pay attention to the accidents per 100,000 hours in commercial vs non-commercial fixed wing. Commercial is about 10-40x safer.
[1] https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institut...
So in the end commercial planes have a higher death toll?
However, often if you’re handling things well, loosing an engine isn’t the end of the world.
A lot of accidents happen very close to the ground, at height wear a parachute wouldn’t necessarily be helpful anyway.
A parachute, a great solution for some scenarios, but for many, it’s not going to change the outcome. Such examples would be mid collisions, low altitude spiral dives, fires, or anything related to a shortage of oxygen. You also need to consider that during a lot of accidents, other factors, such as weather might be impacting the decision matrix of the pilot, and that might prevent them from using a parachute until it’s too late.
The parachutes are also another maintenance item in increasing the cost of running the plane, and generally, the airframe won’t survive the accident, so people are hesitant to deploy them.
(and thank you for Far Cry Primal)
I suppose it's a combination of lower maintenance standards and pilot experience, definitely doesn't make me want to hop in a small plane anytime soon.
It can be monotonous and degrading, but commercial air is the safe way to travel.
I agree with OP's sentiment.
https://www.wired.com/2010/02/plane-crash-kills-tesla-employ...
Other than the fact that the crash happened, there doesn't seem to be any more detailed news yet, so the headline says pretty much what there is to know at this time.
Wtf haha. Everything's autism nowadays isn't it.
Perhaps it's just an alignment of having the money to buy a small plane and being interested in planes.
Boomers and older generations tended to think of them as part of rural life. E.g. farmers would sometimes put an airstrip on a spare field. There's an episode of Mayberry (The Andy Griffith Show) in which Aunt Bea gets her pilots license.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_Air_Force_B...
June 8: A Gulfstream G200 crashed while landing at La Romana International in the DR, it was on the way to pick up former MLB player Yadier Molina, but it had to make an emergency landing. Both pilots, the only occupants, died.
June 10: A Pakistan Army Aviation Mi-17 helicopter crashed near Muzaffarabad. All 22 on board perished.
June 11: Turkish Airlines Flight TK2430, a Boeing 777-300ER, collided with a ground radar antenna while taxiing to its gate after landing at Antalya Airport when the aircraft turned onto a taxiway too small for 777's. Despite the damage to the aircraft, only 1 of 267 souls aboard were injured.
June 11: United Airlines Flight 1275, a Boeing 737, was delayed after a swarm of bees stuck to its right wing. The pilots decided to take off with the insects still on said wing; they all cleared off once the aircraft got airborne. No bees entered the aircraft and no injuries were reported.
June 11: A Piper PA-36 collided with a tower near Barrelman Airport and crashed. The former president of the National Agricultural Aviation Association (NAAA), Rick Boardman, died.
June 11: A Cirrus SR20 crashed into a house after taking off from Portsmouth, Ohio. Only the pilot was killed, and both occupants of the home escaped uninjured.
June 11: A Zhonglian F-27 light helicopter suffered a tail-boom failure and crashed during a test flight in Jiangsu. The pilot and passenger survived with non life-threatening injuries.
June 12: SriLankan Airlines Flight UL-606, an Airbus A330, had its engine struck by lightning just after takeoff from Colombo International; the plane landed safely and no injuries were reported.
June 13: Singapore Airlines Flight SQ114, a Boeing 737-800, suffered burst tires upon landing at Kuala Lumper International; the plane managed to stop on the runway, and no injuries were reported.
June 13: An Indian Air Force An-32 crashed while attempting to land Jorhat Air Force Base in Assam. 5 of the 6 people on board died, with the co-pilot, as of writing, claimed to have been the only survivor.
June 13: A US Marine Corp F/A-18 Hornet Crashed in Washington State near Rimlock Lake. The pilot safely ejected and survived.
June 14: Two helicopters collided mid-air over Brazil. All six people on board both helicopters perished, including American songwriter and rapper, Oliver Tree.
June 14: A Pacific Aerospace 750XL, N221BN, crashed shortly after takeoff from Butler Memorial Airport in Butler, Missouri. The pilot and 11 skydivers on board perished.
June 14: A Piper PA-28, N15564, crashed shortly after takeoff from Key West, Florida. Initially, 5 people were reported to be on board, but it was found out that only 2 people were; both survived.
June 14: Delta Airlines Flight 2905, a Boeing 737-900, collided with a catering truck at Seattle-Tacoma International; no injuries were reported.
June 15: A Russian Tu-22 bomber crashed in Siberia during a training flight. As of writing, everyone on board has been reported to have ejected and survived.
June 15: A Pakistan Air Force trainer aircraft crashed in Pakistan's Mardan district. As of writing, both of the pilots were killed, and at least three motorists were injured.
June 15: A Van's RV-3A crashed into a cow field about 15 miles north of Lakeland, FL. The pilot was killed.
There were some more in the last three days as well...
Of course the 6 months of winter in Toronto also make it less appealing to drive a motorcycle.
it's just not that simple.
Some of the smallest GA craft are the safest by the numbers until you group them into the same category as famously sophisticated or hard to maintain models.
if it were me i'd be worried about the bigger GA planes. More to go wrong, more to distract the pilot, more reliance on the pilot being able to manage multiple engines and special equipment, more difficult take-offs, etc.
a lot of time people do buy multi engine planes for travel so it's not certain it was just a hobby.
A relatively minor error can quickly develop into a situation well beyond your control, without any way out of it. That kind of fatal escalation is pretty much impossible with road vehicles.
A large portion (half?) of crashes also involve alcohol.
Too bad the statistics say otherwise.
I am a motorcyclist myself. I just don’t have the will to lie to myself or others.
DanDanTheFireman is a good channel that goes over footage and analyses what was done well and what was done badly.
A huge danger for motorcycle riders is young/new car drivers who fall into this exact local minimum.
Pilot A might skip flying if the weather looks bad. Pilot B might go "well the storm's actually only at x location on my route, I'll fly around it". Pilot C might insist on more fuel but take the flight.
I'm not pretending it's possible to avoid (all) accidents with enough care - but if you look at NTSB stats, a vast majority of accidents were things that were quite easily avoidable.
Getting an instrument rating, flying in a plane with a weather radar that can go high (pressurized, beyond 40,000 feet or whereabouts), having another spare pilot and spare engine, and following the "big boy" scheduled airline (part 121) protocols and rules and minimums will almost certainly help avoid 50%+ (very conservatively) of GA accidents causes.
Yes, you still need to be careful and not fall victim to things like Get-there-itis (which pushes pilots to fly when they shouldn't because they want to get there). However... it's a swiss cheese model of accident avoidance. Remove as many factors from your side as you can, do your checklists, IMSAFE etc, and you're very likely to be (physically) okay.
Oh, and get a Cirrus with a parachute while we're at it. They've got auto land on their new planes too iirc.
This is a slightly stretched analogy, but test pilots make me think of Alex Hannold. In the movie Free Solo he is presented as some insane person... it turns out that he is extremely intelligent + skilled + practices a lot + can perform under stress.
In both cases, they are the best of us. However, being brave/nuts is the elementary school version of understanding what it takes to be these people.
One thing that sticks out is that GA (small), but also military, planes' accidents usually end with deaths and big planes accidents usually end with everything being fine.
You’ll hear about deadly small plane accidents, and about accidents of large planes, but are unlikely to hear about harmless accidents with small planes. Just not interesting. But they happen all the time.
Thank you. I really like knowing precise names for things, because it gives me a feeling of correctness and satisfaction.
Analogue, in this sense, means some action or thing seen as comparable to another.
If something is analogous of, or to something, it is proportional to something else.
The proportionality describes a primary/secondary relationship. If two actions/things are entirely comparable - i.e. orthagonality approximating 0.0 - then they are not analogues, but rather equivalents.
Something may be a poor comparison to another thing, but still be an analogue - albeit, a poor analogue in comparison to some other, original, instance.
I don't know if this was added in an edit, but it doesn't currently say the average person. I'm pretty sure the average person trying to become a pilot thinks about the danger.
OTOH, there are those, particularly those who actually get training and practice in the high-performance zone, who realize the physics of the situation, and feel positively naked driving out without a seatbelt/harness, or helmet where appropriate.
The guy who lives a dangerous life and has a ton of near misses probably thinks about it a lot more than average but it's not gonna change his behavior so thinking about it really isn't worth anything.
My father subscribed to a newsletter that summarized NTSB general aviation mishap reports when he got his Private Pilot license back in the late 80s. I read them too and was astonished at how many mishaps were very bad judgement calls made by pilots-- flying when the weather wasn't fit, not checking fuel levels, flying after having experienced engine trouble, etc.
I think it should be required reading for every new pilot.
What you need is discipline to say no. That's the root cause of most of these errors. And yes that can be learned.
Every flying club has a few of these people that are talked about in hushed tones at the end of the day when the beers come out. And almost never was the problem their flying skill.
Even if it was it's usually something preventable too. Trying to fix an approach when going around would have been the clear choice. Letting mistakes pile up and not restarting from a known safe position.
Humans make mistakes all. the. time., and you're a human. It is pretty much guaranteed that you are making the exact same kind of mistakes in your day-to-day life. It just doesn't kill you because a broken car merely leaves you stranded and a broken pipe in your home merely causes some financial damage.
Do the same with flying and you'll crash so you'll die. In my opinion private planes should be treated like they are actively trying to kill you, and it is only a matter of time before you will become complacent and make a mistake.
It does not give you 100% guarantees but nothing does.
Of course when you're dealing with a light twin with geared turbocharged engines, there are additional risks from mechanical failures (such as engine fires), as well as mistakes that can happen when addressing an engine failure (shutting down the wrong engine, getting too slow and doing a Vmc roll, etc).
To be honest I would never fly in any light twin other than a Seminole (which I did my multi rating in).
Equipment failure is pretty low on list.
That said, there are a ton of tools available now that give massively enhanced situational awareness to keep pilots from making mistakes. Cooking a cylinder on takeoff should not happen anymore with fully instrumented EGT/CHT displays and alarms. And indeed, powerplant failures are way down despite flying the same powerplants.
But for some reason engine monitors cost thousands [https://sarasotaavionics.com/search?q=engine+monitor]. Many of the dwindling numbers of A&Ps don't know how (and so decline) to install them, and only authorized inspectors (a fraction of licensed mechanics) are allowed to sign off on an installation to make it legal. And when they do, they're told their license is on the line if a mistake is found.
So when a pilot burns or sticks a valve, has to navigate a partial power situation, and in a moment of extreme stress makes an error in emergency landing, was this a technical problem? A regulatory one? A monopolistic economic problem? Or just blind pilot error?
You can fly something smaller and more inline with your budget
You can share the plane with partners
You can get a motorcycle or boat instead.
...I do not disagree that your presented "option 3" is a common one. That hurts me as both an instructor and a mechanic.