Aviation Safety

Bottom Line -->

What ever you decide to do is up to you

Do NOT, however, decide that YOUR definition of safety must be imposed on everyone else just to make YOU feel good about your ideas
 
Jay Honeck said:
What say the group? What is "safe"? Are you safe enough? Are you comfortable with letting pilots decide for themselves, or should the government set and enforce more safety rules?

Let's try to keep it civil -- and have a great Turkey Day! :D

--
Jay Honeck
Port Aransas, TX
Van's RV-8A N14EG
http://www.AmeliasLanding.com
(2013 was our 31st consecutive year at OSH!)
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Jay, an excellent post, except for the above. It is not up to pilots to decide, we have no choice in the matter. GA is a bureaucrats wet dream, they would never, ever, allow pilots to decide for themselves what is safe and what is not. The FAR/AIM is now on the verge of going to two volumes it has grown so thick, and rest assured that it will. GA provides thousands of government jobs and will continue to do so until they regulate GA out of existence, as has happened in most other countries.

Granted, The FAA actively accepts our input, but I think it is more about them putting on the 'we are a nice and fair organization and value your input' hat so as to gather information so even more regs can be established, but the choice is never ours, it is theirs.

Safety is what we learn in ground school, from our instructors, talking to more knowledgeable pilots, and of course reading the FAR/AIM, but mostly we get it from ourselves, we listen to that little feeling we get when we walk to our airplanes. It starts when we first see it, it is automatic for us, we eyeball every inch of it as we approach, we walk around the entire thing before we open the door, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Even on a dirty plane we know where the bird droppings should be before we even look. We know our airplanes better than we know our own face. As we walk we also are not only looking the plane over, we are also looking at the sky, all of it

Most of us know our own limits unless we have been dumb enough to indulge in drugs or alcohol before hand, but those types do not last long in aviation.

FARs existence is not to make us safer, but to provide our authorities the basis for prosecuting us if we cross one of their multitudes of lines.

We set our own safety rules, but the FAA always has the last word.

-John
 
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oldShar said:
Bottom Line -->

What ever you decide to do is up to you

Do NOT, however, decide that YOUR definition of safety must be imposed on everyone else just to make YOU feel good about your ideas
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Truer words were never spoken. If only we could extend this attitude throughout our society! Perhaps then we could go back to the days when manufacturers weren't forced to put goofy warning labels on everything from plastic bags to ladders.

As to whether "risk" in aviation can be quantified, I think there are simply too many variables. With literally hundreds of parts, dozens of actions, and weather conditions all coming into play on every flight, "risk" varies every time we fly.

IMHO, this is one of the main reasons so few people choose to fly light planes. Even if you don't consciously think these thoughts, there are always things that can keep you awake at night: Did your A&P reassemble the trim assembly correctly at the last annual, or is the retaining nut loose? Did that battery you dropped work it's way into the flight controls, and they're about to jam?

There are a jillion of these thoughts that can give you analysis paralysis, virtually preventing flight. So, in that regard, every flight is a leap of faith.

The best we can do is to eliminate stupid stuff. I would list these as:

1. Running out of gas
2. Flying with known mechanical problems
3. Flying into bad weather.
4. Flying when physically unable.

After those Top Four problems, I would rank

5. Exceeding design limitations of your aircraft
6. Low level aerobatics, including buzzing.

And, after that I would rate

7. Not following readily accepted procedures in the airport vicinity.
8. Flying too seldom to remain proficient.

Beyond eliminating these eight pretty obvious things, really, what can we do to enhance "safety"? Can you add any others?
 
You mentioned "exceeding design limitations of your aircraft"

I would add: exceeding capabilities of the pilot.

This is something that can be helped by expanding your personal envelope through things like aerobatic training, or things other than simply the minimum requirements of the PTS.
 
Jay Honeck said:
After 110 years, every aviation topic has probably been beaten to death -- but "safety" is always relative and a personal choice, which makes it endlessly debatable.
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Relative to what, a person's desire to stay alive?

Nothing can remove all risk, and there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to risk mitigation. The crowd that crows, "it's worth the cost if it saves even one life," aren't in touch with economic reality. However, we know that there are behaviors which increase risk and behaviors which decrease risk, and those behaviors help to define "safety" over time. There are many things that I may choose to do, but which could not reasonably be described as "safe."


JKG
 
Jay Honeck said:
This is the definition I use as well, but our society continues to turn the screws on people who believe as we believe.

More and more, our government is defining an acceptable level of risk by enacting laws and regulations that have allowed lawyers and plaintiffs to sue companies to death for infractions that, in years gone by, would have been shrugged off. This covers everything from ladders to swimming pools and airplanes. (Ever wonder what happened to diving boards? Gosh, they were fun.)

WRT aviation, you can make flying safer by adhering to three simple rules:

1. Don't fly with known mechanical issues -- and be fanatical about maintenance.

2. Don't fly without enough gas.

3. Don't fly into bad weather.

Eliminate those three things, and you eliminate a HUGE number of aviation "accidents". Beyond these actions, the return-on-investment starts to become smaller and smaller.
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Well...the FIRST one isn't that major, at least the first half of it. Lots of accidents are caused by bad maintenance or mechanical issues, but the "flying with known maintenance issues" isn't all that rare. It occurs more often in homebuilts, of course.

I grabbed a couple of my accident databases and combined them... the PA-28-140, -160, -180, and -180 one, and my Cessna 172 one (no homebuilts). Both are ten-year databases, running from 2001 through 2010, inclusive. I eliminated accidents related to pilot training or with a Student at the controls. This left 1,229 accidents.

Of course, nearly half were due to the pilot not controlling their airplane adequately. I eliminated those to produce a list that covers bad decisions and mechanical issues only. That left 630.

Here's the rate of occurrence among those 630, in descending order:

Fuel Exhaustion : 17.5%
VFR to IFR : 9.2%
Undetermined Loss of Power : 8.1%
Maneuvering at low alt : 8.1%
Maintenance Error : 6.8%
Engine Mechanical : 5.2%
Carb Ice : 4.0%
Taxi Accident : 3.8%
Fuel Starvation : 3.3%
Midair Collision : 3.3%
Other Mechanical : 3.0%
Fuel Contamination : 2.1%
Inadequate Preflight : 1.9%
Fuel System : 1.7%
Turbulence/Winds : 1.4%
Loss of Control (Unknown) : 0.5%
Landing Gear/Brakes : 0.2%

Try using this to set up your "scoring".

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Well...the FIRST one isn't that major, at least the first half of it. Lots of accidents are caused by bad maintenance or mechanical issues, but the "flying with known maintenance issues" isn't all that rare. It occurs more often in homebuilts, of course.

I grabbed a couple of my accident databases and combined them... the PA-28-140, -160, -180, and -180 one, and my Cessna 172 one (no homebuilts). Both are ten-year databases, running from 2001 through 2010, inclusive. I eliminated accidents related to pilot training or with a Student at the controls. This left 1,229 accidents.

Of course, nearly half were due to the pilot not controlling their airplane adequately. I eliminated those to produce a list that covers bad decisions and mechanical issues only. That left 630.

Here's the rate of occurrence among those 630, in descending order:

Fuel Exhaustion : 17.5%
VFR to IFR : 9.2%
Undetermined Loss of Power : 8.1%
Maneuvering at low alt : 8.1%
Maintenance Error : 6.8%
Engine Mechanical : 5.2%
Carb Ice : 4.0%
Taxi Accident : 3.8%
Fuel Starvation : 3.3%
Midair Collision : 3.3%
Other Mechanical : 3.0%
Fuel Contamination : 2.1%
Inadequate Preflight : 1.9%
Fuel System : 1.7%
Turbulence/Winds : 1.4%
Loss of Control (Unknown) : 0.5%
Landing Gear/Brakes : 0.2%

Try using this to set up your "scoring".

Ron Wanttaja
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Whew! I think we may have crossed over into the "too complex" category WRT scoring. lol

Interesting how they/you break out fuel starvation from fuel exhaustion... I've read too many NTSB reports where pilots have landed engine-out, off-field, due to fuel exhaustion, only to find the selector valve set to an empty tank while the other tank still had gas.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Whew! I think we may have crossed over into the "too complex" category WRT scoring. lol
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Actually, if you look at the top three causes (other than undetermined poewr loss), that's nearly *50%* of the accidents that weren't caused by control mismanagement. Get enough pilots to take the "pledge" (no pushing fuel, no VFR into IFR, no buzzing), and you reduce the total accident rate by 25%. Nearly anything else is in the noise (e.g., lots of categories, but relatively low occurrence rates).

Jay Honeck said:
Interesting how they/you break out fuel starvation from fuel exhaustion...
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It's a pleasure to deal with an educated man who knows the difference. :)

Ron Wanttaja
 
RJM62 said:
I agree. My funeral plans involve someone taking my corpse up for a ride over the ocean in a biplane, flying more than 50 miles offshore, and inverting.

We don't have all the legal details worked out yet, but it seems that it's legal provided that the body is weighted, the drop is done at least 50 miles out, and someone authorized to sign the interment certificate is present as a witness. So if the pilot is also an ordained preacher, a funeral director, or someone else empowered to sign the form, we're golden. Otherwise, a second plane will be needed.

I'd actually rather the drop be done from a trike, but most trikes are difficult or impossible to fly inverted, and the wing would be in the way in any case. Cremation is also out of the question. Fish have to eat, too.

-Rich
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What do you think about this ?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ly-guarded-tradition-Tibetan-sky-funeral.html
 
Concorde said:
What do you think about this ?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ly-guarded-tradition-Tibetan-sky-funeral.html
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I think I wouldn't want their job. :wink2:

Really, does it matter what happens to the body? Worm food (under ground), fish food (at sea), or bird food (in Tibet), we're all made of star stuff.

In a few billion years, when our sun goes super nova, that will be our atomic level fate, whether we've been eaten by birds or not. We (or our atoms, anyway) will all be cast back into the cosmos, and new stars will form from our bits.

Not a bad fate, really.
 
Well considering the sun will not go nova our eventual fate is a little more lonely
 
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