Platte River near KFET, 3 fatal

traumamed said:
I often wonder what GA's safety record would be if we didn't have all the FAFO accidents.
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Iirc from my motorcycle days, some crazy percentage of fatals.... Like 50%.... Involved alcohol and/or excessive speed. I've long suspected airplanes are the same way. Pilots who don't fly much, scud running, vfr into Imc, fuel exhaustion. Lots of easily avoidable ways to kill yourself.
 
I looked into this a while ago, I recall about 60% of the accidents were in the FAFO category.
 
AV8R_87 said:
I looked into this a while ago, I recall about 60% of the accidents were in the FAFO category.
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Does FAFO include fuel issues? Or is that part of the other 40%. A case can be made for either
 
Jim K said:
Iirc from my motorcycle days, some crazy percentage of fatals.... Like 50%.... Involved alcohol and/or excessive speed. I've long suspected airplanes are the same way. Pilots who don't fly much, scud running, vfr into Imc, fuel exhaustion. Lots of easily avoidable ways to kill yourself.
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I agree with all this. And yet my friend Bob Stark, who is as competent and sober a pilot as ever flew, died in that cessna twin accident at Boca Raton 2 weeks ago. His son and granddaughter died with him. Jammed rudder. Unsure yet of cause but it definitely wasn't FAFO.
 
Racerx said:
Does FAFO include fuel issues? Or is that part of the other 40%. A case can be made for either
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Yes. Here's a good breakdown from a reddit post of a guy that looked at a bunch of accident reports:

Hold My Beer: this is for stuff like the pilot was on cocaine and drunk during the flight, the plane was over gross and 5 years out of annual, AND he took off VFR into IMC without getting a Wx briefing.

Stupid: Pilot ignored some fundamental steps in the process, but it wasn’t an obvious suicide mission from the get go. This is stuff like trying to make a 6-hour flight on 5-hour gas tanks, attempting a takeoff that even a glimpse at the POH’s Takeoff Performance page would have told you was never going to work, VFR into IMC that wasn’t intentional but should have known it was coming, and thrill-seeking. I mean no disrespect to the dead with the “stupid” title.

Swiss Cheese / Stick and Rudder: this is for stuff where with good training and skills, you should be able to fly out of it, but if you’re honest with yourself, it could get you. Unfortunate and atypical encounters with wake turbulence, nasty wind on landing, partial panel in turbulent IMC.

Fate Is The Hunter, with compliments to Earnest Gann: these are the nightmare-fuel ones, the ones that are uncomfortable to read because you know that despite whatever you might tell yourself about your skills and decision-making, there was no escaping death in that plane on that day. A bird strike by a bald eagle removed the horizontal stabilizer. Some NORDO idiot drops out of the sky onto your high-wing plane when you’re on final. Engine failure at 200’ AGL with no good options.

The final tally: HMB: 29% Stupid: 33% Swiss Cheese: 17% Fate is the Hunter: 10%

You’ll note they don’t add up to 100%. I set aside suicides, of which there were a surprising amount and reports where it was just really hard to figure out what on earth happened.
 
The most recent fixed wing accident locally that bugs me was of a guy flying from PA I think, up to Albany, flying a dog or two volunteer for an adoption thing. CFIT in the Catskills. By all accounts a good guy, not trying to be brave, not showing off, just probably made some mistakes.

There's a trap that I'm always concerned I'll fall into, in reading the accident reports, to think "well I don't drink, I don't show off, I'm not in a rush, I won't do that". But I have to remember that I can make mistakes just like anyone else, even if I'm aware of all of those bad personality things that can kill you.
 
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