"Pilot seats that suddenly slide backward, making airplanes nose-dive when pilots lose grip of the controls"
good grief
I have a lycoming.
I'm totally effed.
What a sensationalized story... Thomas Frank and the editors should be ashamed. In 2009 25,000 people died in the US from FALLS! Falls send almost 9 MILLION people to the emergency room every year. There's your story. No, airplanes are far more mysterious and exclusive, and the topic plays to peoples' fears.
I can see it now, Part 1 - Falls from chairs, Part 2 - Falls from ladders, Part 3 - The Trip and Fall.
Comparing GA to airline safety in itself is completely flawed.
Even if the same rules of training and maintenance (and $$$$$$$) were applied to GA aircraft, the safety record of typical GA airplanes still wouldn't match the airlines IMHO.
I think that's the point. The article talks about how the NTSB is quick to classify issues as pilot error without looking at actual mechanical causes. And even where pilot error exists, the survivability is not good and the NTSB and FAA don't really emphasize increasing survivability - like mitigating post crash fires and explosions and so forth.The focus on mechanical failures and post crash fires is baffling, since 80%+ of accidents are pilot induced. The fire thing is inevitable when you have aircraft light enough to take off coupled with enough fuel to get anywhere, and impact energies often much higher than car crashes.
This is just BS.
The "do nothings" of this country hate anything but existing. Anything beyond that is seen as a challange to be made illegal.
Guns, planes, boats, 2-stroke engines, 4-stroke engines, lead, diesel engines, 3 wheelers, lawn darts, lawn mowers............. It never ends!
In 2013 alone, there were 1,199 general-aviation crashes -- more than three per day on average -- killing 347 people, injuring 571 and destroying 121 aircraft.
So 1,199 crashes and only 121 destroyed aircraft?
One of the Mpls local TV news anchors repeated this BS. I was especially impressed with a quote from the article talking about engines stalling due to known defects in the carburetors.Two more articles released today, looks like this will be a whole series.
Can't someone sue USA Today for publishing slanted, misleading articles? Maybe Flying Magazine needs to write an article titled "Unfit for Journalism."
So would it be safe to assume there were only 121 deadly crashes in 2013? How often does the plane out survive those on board?
I'm sure AOPA will get right on that considering all the other issues they're effectively addressing.
Yep, they are on it. In fact, the AOPA Facebook page is where I learned of it first.
http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/...-Today-report-extremely-flawed-AOPA-says.aspx
a very fine rebuttal in the Huffington Post, of all places...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/unfit-for-publication-how_b_5509253.html
So, they put an article on their website and Facebook page that only the choir will see. And that helps how exactly?