do fatal accidents make you think twice?

Accidents/Incidents don't bug me much.

Personally, I'm willing to accept a certain amount of danger/risk based on how much fun it is.
 
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**** happens.

I know airline pilots with 20k hours who haven't so much as shut down an engine, except in the sim.

Go fly. Or not. But be not afraid, enjoy it to the max, and use good judgement.
 
EdFred said:
Car accidents I've been in: 2
Airplane accidents I've been in: 0

I've probably flown more than half as many miles as I've driven. So even if I have an airplane accident, the ratio is still in GA's favor.
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An interesting point.

We KNOW say driving is safer than flying GA, at least as far as death is concerned. However it's much easier for someone else to kill you on the road than in the air. Odds are it you die in a plane you have only you to blame
 
Perhaps it's just that the aviator community is so much smaller and that if someone gets killed you're just more likely to have personally known them.
 
bluee said:
How can two very experienced pilots with thousands of hours die like that? By comparison I have a measly 250 hours and those deaths have shaken me up. I don't want to kill myself or anyone else.
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We had a neighbor about 10 years ago who slipped in the shower, hit her head, and died from a subsequent blood clot. She was 65 years old at the time and in excellent health. Presumably she had taken a shower every day for some 60 years.

How can someone with 6 decades of experience showering die like that? I have much less experience. I don't want to kill myself. Maybe it would be better to be smelly but alive.
 
JHW said:
We had a neighbor about 10 years ago who slipped in the shower, hit her head, and died from a subsequent blood clot. She was 65 years old at the time and in excellent health. Presumably she had taken a shower every day for some 60 years.

How can someone with 6 decades of experience showering die like that? I have much less experience. I don't want to kill myself. Maybe it would be better to be smelly but alive.
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Going without the shower is not going to help. Smell, disease, health issues, ect. Recognizing the danger of the slippery floor and doing something about it, taking action to install anti skid, grab handles, ect. , is what would have saved her life.

Same with flying, don't fly in the rain. ;)
 
I read every article in Aviation mags about accidents, fatal and non fatal, as a learning tool. Almost always, the pilot did something dumb, including handling an in flight emergency. Those that were beyond reasonable expectation of surviving are part of the risk of flying.

Ever since I had an engine failure with a humongous 60 hours in my log book and my family on board, the possibility of something going wrong is always first in my mind. That experience which ended with a semi normal landing at CVG, convinced me that if you don't do something totally stupid on purpose and keep your head screwed on straight when the unexpected happens, you should survive most anything in flying.

If something happens in an airplane beyond recovery after all the maintenance, planning and training, it's been a great life as far as it went and worth every hour in the air (and ground). Its also why I carry life insurance. ;)

Cheers
 
Asking on a pilots board about fatal accidents is like going to the Baptist church and asking if God is real, the answers are obvious.

IMO it is REALLY hard to be a safe non-professional pilot, this includes former professional pilots with lots of hours. There is a HUGE commitment of time and money to stay safe. 50 hours a year IMO is a joke for real currency. Reality is that going out on a Saturday and blowing $500-1000 dollars with a CFI just to check skills is destined to eventually fail. Maybe you have other commitments, maybe you'd rather do something else with that money, or you have to. Maybe you're just bored with T&G's around the pattern. There are many things conspiring to make us less safe and that's the problem.
 
Years ago, EMT picked parts of one of my neighbors and his bike out from under a semi driven by a sleep deprived driver. Pretty gruesome scene. Aviation is a risk I can manage and as much as midairs are part of the risk, being blindsided on a Trek 520 is NOT the way I want to meet my Maker. I'm sorry, but bikes and motorcycles on the road are like wildebeast calves in a lion's den.
 
We just lost a co-worker, his wife and two daughters (son survived) two weeks ago. Head on collision with a drunk truck driver going the wrong way on a divided highway. And we are in the military training command business (read 10 feet from another airplane where neither of the acting pilots know what the F they're doing). The SUV was an aluminum plate when people got to the scene. I know a dozen people blown away by automobile fatalities. I can't count even five aviation fatalities I personally know of and I'm a military pilot.

I've also been hit by other vehicles with my pregnant wife in tow. It's effing madness out there on the roads. It's bumper cars with no regard for others. When I'm flying it's big sky theory, and like I said I fly at 3 to 10 feet from another airplane routinely. I feel way safer up there than in the highway. So count me in on the motorcycle/automobile averse crowd. A lot more outside your control in auto/motorcycle collisions than when flying my private airplane.

Keep these piston jobs 'lite IMC' or better, due to the lack of reliability of instrumentation and sheer lack of power, don't be an idiot stick-and-rudder wise (which means if you can't keep from base turn stalling in the alloted yearly flying hours budget you've given yourself, then don't fly), and stay outside convective outlooks (yes, this means reduced dispatchability) and under that mission profile I'll fly the prop job with family in tow any day of the week and twice on Sunday over driving on a highway with 30,000 of my closest enemies day or night, when they like to get drunk too.

So no, airplane fatals don't make me think twice. Car fatals do in fact have made me think twice and have changed my behavior and risk tolerance about the kind of profiles I allow my family to drive under. I'll take gliding engine out into a night landscape @ 60KIAS Vso east of the Rockies any day over automobile collisions of any closure rate with vehicles of varying weight differentials and operator attitudes/proficiency.
 
My view is to learn from the mistakes of others.
 
When we talk about cars, or at least new cars, they've got like 20 airbags and A-pillars the diameter of Schwarzenegger's thigh so despite our dislike for regulation in general that, along with a greater number of divided roads, has kept the lid on traffic fatalities in most developed countries.

Now if we were in India, they have a ridiculously high road fatality rate, like 50 times what we have here if you factor it by fatalities per number of total vehicles so I'd dare say that flying would certainly be safer than driving in India.

A few numbers for trivia's sake:

India 12.3 million vehicles, 114,000 fatalities per year
US: 254 million vehicles, 41,000 fatalities per year
 
bbchien said:
They should instead always be asking, "I wonder how my accident report will read...". That would go a long way to stopping the mayhem.
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What Bruce said.

Thanks to a primary instructor who said, "before you think about pushing the starter, think if this goes bad, how is the NTSB report going to read. If you wouldn't be embarrassed, you'll be ok."

Best piece of advice I ever got.
 
It doesn't make me think twice about flying, but it does make me think twice about specific decisions and tailor my flying in order to reduce risk. I'll give you some examples.

Don't run out of fuel. Be conservative.

Circling approaches at night have resulted in a number of loss of control accidents. Do a straight-in if practical. Consider a straight-in instrument approach at night even when VMC for terrain avoidance.

Weather is a big deal. Pick weather appropriately, and have good equipment for dealing with it.

Goes on and on.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
It doesn't make me think twice about flying, but it does make me think twice about specific decisions and tailor my flying in order to reduce risk. I'll give you some examples.

Don't run out of fuel. Be conservative.

Circling approaches at night have resulted in a number of loss of control accidents. Do a straight-in if practical. Consider a straight-in instrument approach at night even when VMC for terrain avoidance.

Weather is a big deal. Pick weather appropriately, and have good equipment for dealing with it.

Goes on and on.
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I just had this discussion with my instrument instructor, who does not like circling approaches.

Once on a cross-country, I calculated I would have enough fuel, and then I doubted myself and kept thinking about, and then decided it was stupid to dwell on it, and landed at the next airport I passed to buy fuel.
 
bluee said:
I just had this discussion with my instrument instructor, who does not like circling approaches.

Once on a cross-country, I calculated I would have enough fuel, and then I doubted myself and kept thinking about, and then decided it was stupid to dwell on it, and landed at the next airport I passed to buy fuel.
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We were having the circling approach discussion on another forum. One pilot pointed out his 757/767 type rating had the limitation of "circling approaches vfr only" or the like. This did impact the decision of another Twin Cessna pilot the other evening - who was assigned a circling and asked for straight in instead. Good thing, too - it was below circling mins despite the METARs. My 135 ops manual prohibited circling approaches, too.

Good call on the fuel. I look at the fuel very carefully, and have my outs and plan fuel stops if needed.

We all could end up killing ourselves in a plane crash. But by reading the NTSB reports, we can help figure out ways other people have died and not do that.

But some days, it's just not your day.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Circling approaches at night have resulted in a number of loss of control accidents. Do a straight-in if practical. Consider a straight-in instrument approach at night even when VMC for terrain avoidance.
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This. When I got my instrument rating, I flew out of ISZ (RIP). We used HAO for practice - it had a LOC but no ILS at the time.

There's a hill just North of the NW corner of the runway - that drives the point home very quickly about the risks of doing a circling approach, especially at night. Lesson learned.
 
I will not do a night circling approach. Period dot.

Only time I would ever consider it would be if I were about to flame out and it was the only option, but that being said, I'm not going to box myself into a corner where that is the only escape. I'm certainly not going to plan to divert somewhere where I will have to use circling mins to get under the weather. Obviously never is too much of an absolute, but my opinion is almost never in this case.
 
wsuffa said:
This. When I got my instrument rating, I flew out of ISZ (RIP). We used HAO for practice - it had a LOC but no ILS at the time.

There's a hill just North of the NW corner of the runway - that drives the point home very quickly about the risks of doing a circling approach, especially at night. Lesson learned.
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I learned at IPT. I think you've been there. For those who haven't, there is a ridge about 1500 ft above field elevation a mile or so south of the airport. A circling approach to runway 9 has your base leg pointing straight at that ridge.

I was never thrilled with night VFR around that area, and I was very familiar with the area. But since I was, I made conservative buffers for myself for safety. It's also why when I go to an area that I don't know at night, I do an approach.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I learned at IPT. I think you've been there. For those who haven't, there is a ridge about 1500 ft above field elevation a mile or so south of the airport. A circling approach to runway 9 has your base leg pointing straight at that ridge.

I was never thrilled with night VFR around that area, and I was very familiar with the area. But since I was, I made conservative buffers for myself for safety. It's also why when I go to an area that I don't know at night, I do an approach.
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LUK isn't much better.
 
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