Why are so many people afraid to fly in small airplanes?

OOC, why did you omit "fiery" from the crash description in the car? Don't they burn too?

kevin7500 said:
I think the "being able to see" is part of the problem with passengers in small planes. There is very little perceived motion in a commercial airliner. For a first time passenger in GA there is quite a bit of new data to process associated with being able to see.

Also, my 2009 Pontiac G8 has both active (seatbelt) and passive (front and side airbag) restraint systems, four wheel anti-lock disk brakes, engineered crumple zones, etc.... The 1970 something Warrior that I fly has a lap belt. I am very likely to survive most crashes in my G8. I am not likely to survive a fiery crash on take off or a base-to-final stall in the Warrior.

Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...
 
Did you fly in airliners before becoming a pilot? If so, did you feel the same way then?
Tim Cobb said:
I feel a total loss of control when I'm in seat 43F on the way to Frankfurt. I can't see where the plane is headed or even the cockpit. I feel safer in a small aircraft.
Click to expand...
 
John Baker said:
At first it kinda pis*ed me off that he didn't trust my ability, or me. Then I got to thinking about it, and realized he would be downright dangerous to have in the right seat on a takeoff or landing. It would be stupid to fly with a terrified passenger who had the controls within their reach.
Click to expand...

Excellent point. That thought has crossed my mind whilst flying nervous passengers. The notion of putting dual controls on the passenger side only makes sense if you completely trust your passenger.

BTW: This is why I require another experienced adult ("parent-in-command") in the right seat when I do Young Eagle flights. I once had a kid start crying in fear in flight, and it could've gotten ugly if his mom wasn't on board to talk him down.
 
kevin7500 said:
I think the "being able to see" is part of the problem with passengers in small planes. There is very little perceived motion in a commercial airliner. For a first time passenger in GA there is quite a bit of new data to process associated with being able to see.

Also, my 2009 Pontiac G8 has both active (seatbelt) and passive (front and side airbag) restraint systems, four wheel anti-lock disk brakes, engineered crumple zones, etc.... The 1970 something Warrior that I fly has a lap belt. I am very likely to survive most crashes in my G8. I am not likely to survive a fiery crash on take off or a base-to-final stall in the Warrior.

Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...


You may, or you may not survive either, is it your day to die?
 
wabower said:
OOC, why did you omit "fiery" from the crash description in the car? Don't they burn too?
Click to expand...

Sure. But, my car is rarely full of fuel and it is never has 50 gallons of high octane on board. Not to mention that my car is 35 years worth of technology newer (remember the Chevy pick-up fires of the '70s). Or that the fuel cell in the car is not sticking off the sides easily available for impact and puncture.
 
steingar said:
The accident rate is so much higher for aircraft than cars that it is utterly ridiculous. As a group we are unsafe, no doubts there. If there were more of us, airplane crashes wouldn't be newsworthy because there'd be so many of them. Then again, if there were more of us some idiot would have plowed into a school full of kids or something equally tragic and we'd all be legislated out of business.
Click to expand...

Bull****. These statements *seem* to be an attempt to "keep it real" and not white-wash things. However they seem to go beyond that and make blanket statements that we "as a group" are unsafe.

Just what the hell is "unsafe"? Do pilots die of their own stupidity? Yup. Do planes crash? Sure.

However it seems that there is a vocal group of pilots that trumpet from on-high how dangerous and unsafe we are, and that I simply reject, period.

Read these causes of death:
http://www.statisticstop10.com/Causes_of_Death_in_US.html
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Hell even read the latest Nall report: http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/nall.html and we had the lowest recorded accident rate (yes flights were down, and yes the fatality rate stayed near its historical levels) but to claim that general aviation, and its pilots, are unsafe and dangerous is disingenuous and damaging to us all.
 
I do agree with others in this forum that we live in a fear based society. Media is constantly telling the population what to be afraid of. Parents are over protective of children because of too many milk carton ads. I pods and cell phones are another problem. Even the slightest problem in GA is now instantly recorded and shared with millions instantly.
 
tdager said:
Just what the hell is "unsafe"? Do pilots die of their own stupidity? Yup. Do planes crash? Sure.
Click to expand...

There is no "safe" or "usafe," only varying degrees of risk.

However it seems that there is a vocal group of pilots that trumpet from on-high how dangerous and unsafe we are, and that I simply reject, period.
Click to expand...

I don't go around bringing the subject up among non-pilots, but when the subject comes up, I'm not going to lie or hide what I know about it either.

Read these causes of death:
http://www.statisticstop10.com/Causes_of_Death_in_US.html
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Click to expand...

Notice that accidents are in the top ten for both lists.

It's undeniably true that there are a lot more motor vehicle accidents than aviation accidents, but a large part of that it due to the fact that there is a lot more driving than flying. I don't think it's much of a recommendation if the only reason GA flying is not on the list is because there's a lot less of it being done.

Hell even read the latest Nall report: http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/nall.html and we had the lowest recorded accident rate (yes flights were down, and yes the fatality rate stayed near its historical levels) but to claim that general aviation, and its pilots, are unsafe and dangerous is disingenuous and damaging to us all.
Click to expand...

It's great that the GA fatality rate is near its historical low, but I think most potential passengers want to know the risk compared to something they are familiar with, like driving.

If you look more deeply into the Nall reports, you will see that a lot of aviation fatalities come from pilots taking excessive risks, like VFR into IMC, and failing to maintain adequate fuel reserves, for example. What's damaging to general aviation is to fool ourselves about the relative risk levels, because then we act as enablers for those who think it's OK to do that.

If we want more people to feel safe flying with us, we need to dramatically improve our safety record. Not talking about it is not going to solve the problem.
 
I don't pretend to speak for the whole spectrum of GA participants out there, but for me it comes down to money. If I could afford technology in my aircraft commensurate with that of my daily driver (a 10 year old jeep), I would be inherently safer by proxy. As such, I'm priced out of making that choice. So it simply comes down to stop flying outright, which is a catch-22 of a recourse.

Magnetos, mechanical gyros, vapor lock prone fuel systems (vapor lock?!? in 2010?!?! YGBSM!), carburators, manual mixture control, fear of corrosion and delamination every year come inspection time, riverboat age spec old a$$ engines... and I'm supposed to fly "safely" in-cloud? I don't even do that in my car and at least I got ABS and traction control for my troubles. I got bicycle brakes and flintstone age tires in the airplane and I'm making contact with the pavement at a much faster speed than 75% of my daily driver speeds. Tis' the corners we cut to "afford" the priviledge of breaking contact with the earth. It shouldn't have to be this way.

Flying is not driving. Noted. Flying is a risky endeavor. Noted. But assuming one is not actively trying to kill oneself by pushing the issue in-flight, better technology would go a long way to allow me, as an individual participant of GA, to conduct a safer flight day in and day out. But I can't, because the market is hung on these 30+ y/o a$$ contraptions that wouldn't pass a cursory car tag inspection at the gas station. So the answer is to corner and price-out the market, which makes it even more economies-of-scale prone to cost bloating. Fewer people can afford to, so more and more choose to take a chance on old technology. Assuming a fixed nominal GA operator mission envelope (point A to point B with mostly VFR wx ahead and no upset attitudes), older technology yields a thinner margin for the peanut gallery to uncover his a$$ with, in an accident. But you need more peanut gallery in the business to drive down the production cost of phasing out the 30 yo spam can technology. In their absence, 30 yo spam can is what you get, never mind elitist. Might as well call it the UK. It's a catch.

My 0.02 pesos.
 
Palmpilot said:
If you look more deeply into the Nall reports, you will see that a lot of aviation fatalities come from pilots taking excessive risks, like VFR into IMC, and failing to maintain adequate fuel reserves, for example. What's damaging to general aviation is to fool ourselves about the relative risk levels, because then we act as enablers for those who think it's OK to do that.
Click to expand...

That was the case years ago but fuel management (6.5%) and weather (3.6%) related accidents now comprise a very small portion of all accidents. The push to educate pilots on those issues seem to be working.

Those numbers are from the 2008 Nall Report.
 
Anthony said:
... The feminization of our society, the media which propels this, and liabilty fears have all contributed to attitudes about doing anything that has perceived risk. Sad.
Click to expand...
Per your premise, when did this process of feminization start? Were people not afraid of flying in little planes before this time?
-harry
 
dmccormack said:
It's funny that pilots will readily quote statistics supporting the "safety" of GA, but will ignore statistics when offered an opportunity to jump from an airplane.
Click to expand...
I've never seen anybody offer up such statistics. Doing a little digging, though, it seems that the risk of death from 1 jump is comparable to the risk of death in 1 hr of GA flying. There's certainly nothing in those statistics that would dissuade me from jumping.
-harry
 
Tim Cobb said:
I feel a total loss of control when I'm in seat 43F on the way to Frankfurt. I can't see where the plane is headed or even the cockpit. I feel safer in a small aircraft.
Click to expand...

Ditto to that. The moment one solos an aircraft changes forever how one flies commercial. Are you in control or is someone else--that's the difference.
 
mantakos said:
I've never seen anybody offer up such statistics. Doing a little digging, though, it seems that the risk of death from 1 jump is comparable to the risk of death in 1 hr of GA flying. There's certainly nothing in those statistics that would dissuade me from jumping.
-harry
Click to expand...

Which proves my point -- no one chooses to fly or not fly based on statistics.

Even if you could assure people of 100% safety in parachute jumping, probably less than 2% of the population would do it.
 
dmccormack said:
Which proves my point -- no one chooses to fly or not fly based on statistics...
Click to expand...
Well ... I do, actually, but I'm probably a little abnormal in that respect.

But normal humans who aren't suffering from supernerdism apply a more intuition-based approach to risk estimation. They use their instincts to judge. Small things are flimsier than big things. High is more dangerous than low. Fast is more dangerous than slow. Professionals are more capable than amateurs.

Add to that some anecdotal data, accidents they've heard about, famous people who have died in plane crashes, put it all in a blender for a few seconds, and the resulting puree is the judgment of risk.
-harry
 
"I told Orville and I told Wilbur and I'll tell you, that damn thing will never get off the ground."

anon


mantakos said:
Add to that some anecdotal data, accidents they've heard about, famous people who have died in plane crashes, put it all in a blender for a few seconds, and the resulting puree is the judgment of risk.
-harry
Click to expand...
 
mantakos said:
supernerdism
Click to expand...
I almost looked that word up before it dawned on me... :rofl:

mantakos said:
Add to that some anecdotal data, accidents they've heard about, famous people who have died in plane crashes, put it all in a blender for a few seconds, and the resulting puree is the judgment of risk.
Click to expand...
Speaking of anecdotal, I'll bet we can come up with more famous people who have died in airplane accidents than car accidents. Is that perception or reality?
 
PittsDriver said:
That was the case years ago but fuel management (6.5%) and weather (3.6%) related accidents now comprise a very small portion of all accidents. The push to educate pilots on those issues seem to be working.

Those numbers are from the 2008 Nall Report.
Click to expand...

I was looking at the 2009 Nall report. It shows weather related accidents at 4.0% of total accidents, which is not much different from the 2008 report you cited, but I tend to pay more attention to fatal accident rates, where weather comes in at 14.8%, second only to maneuvering, at 19.8% (Figure 12).

In any case those are just examples. Of greater significance is the fact that for non-commercial flying, "pilot-related" accounts for over 70% of both total accidents and fatal accidents (Figure 7). The report defines pilot related as "accidents arising from the improper actions or inactions of the pilot." That figure tells me that there is a lot to be gained from getting pilots to take safety more seriously, and I don't think we can do that by pretending that our safety record is better than it is.
 
Last edited:
hindsight2020 said:
I don't pretend to speak for the whole spectrum of GA participants out there, but for me it comes down to money. If I could afford technology in my aircraft commensurate with that of my daily driver (a 10 year old jeep), I would be inherently safer by proxy. As such, I'm priced out of making that choice. So it simply comes down to stop flying outright, which is a catch-22 of a recourse.
Click to expand...

The 2009 Nall report shows that for non-commercial flying, mechanical issues accounted for only 14% of total accidents, and only 8% of fatal accidents, so I would not use the age of the technology as a reason to quit flying. I would be much more concerned with the competence and judgment of the pilot.
 
Palmpilot said:
I was looking at the 2009 Nall report. It shows weather related accidents at 4.0% of total accidents, which is not much different from the 2008 report you cited, but I tend to pay more attention to fatal accident rates, where weather comes in at 14.8%, second only to maneuvering, at 19.8% (Figure 12).

In any case those are just examples. Of greater significance is the fact that for non-commercial flying, "pilot-related" accounts for over 70% of both total accidents and fatal accidents (Figure 7). The report defines pilot related as "accidents arising from the improper actions or inactions of the pilot." That figure tells me that there is a lot to be gained from getting pilots to take safety more seriously, and I don't think we can do that by pretending that our safety record is better than it is.
Click to expand...

There is also something to be gained by getting quite a few people to admit to themselves they are not cut out for this. Planes are not cars, there is about 5 times more thought energy that goes into flying over driving, and the mind has to be flexible as well. There are a lot of pilots out there that shouldn't be. The most hazardous pilots are those that don't make mistakes because they are cautious. They have no clue as to how many mistakes they actually make and aren't aware that they have to make a correction for that mistake before it makes a link in a chain.
 
Last edited:
Henning said:
There is also something to be gained by getting quite a few people to admit to themselves they are not cut out for this.
Click to expand...

While I agree with this statement that there are people exercising their privilege that shouldn't be, my intuition would be that there are even more people who should be making more no-go decisions than they do. I'd lump in to that category pilots flying when their head isn't in it and those that tend more toward the macho trait i.e. trying things in an airplane that they shouldn't.

Using the 2009 report, fuel management and weather combined account for a little less than 10% of all accidents. However, if you combine all the causes of pilot induced accidents that relate pretty directly back to stick and rudder skills, you get a number around 20% of all accidents - and that's not including landing accidents (another 33%) which you could also argue are just stick and rudder skills as well.
 
Henning said:
The most hazardous pilots are those that don't make mistakes because they are cautious. They have no clue as to how many mistakes they actually make and aren't aware that they have to make a correction for that mistake before it makes a link in a chain.
Click to expand...


Exactly.

The most dangerous pilot by far is the pilot who believes he is far better than he actually is. I've flown with a couple -- I get out of the airplane shaking my head resolving never to sign any logbook.
 
Henning said:
There is also something to be gained by getting quite a few people to admit to themselves they are not cut out for this. Planes are not cars, there is about 5 times more thought energy that goes into flying over driving, and the mind has to be flexible as well. There are a lot of pilots out there that shouldn't be. The most hazardous pilots are those that don't make mistakes because they are cautious. They have no clue as to how many mistakes they actually make and aren't aware that they have to make a correction for that mistake before it makes a link in a chain.
Click to expand...

How can a pilot that doesn't make mistakes be hazardous?

Did you mean to say "...most hazardous pilots are those that think they don't make mistakes"?
 
Bob Noel said:
How can a pilot that doesn't make mistakes be hazardous?

Did you mean to say "...most hazardous pilots are those that think they don't make mistakes"?
Click to expand...


Good clarification -- that's how I understood Henning's post, but after seeing yours, i see I read into the sentence what may not have been there.
 
Henning said:
snip... The most hazardous pilots are those that don't make mistakes because they are cautious. ... snip
Click to expand...

I don't follow this either?? Are you also saying the most hazardous pilot are ones who are cautious? i.e., One who exercises a no-go decision due to caution is most hazardous?
 
PittsDriver said:
While I agree with this statement that there are people exercising their privilege that shouldn't be, my intuition would be that there are even more people who should be making more no-go decisions than they do.
Click to expand...

And the no-go decision must sometimes be made in the air. My life has been saved more than once by my willingness to divert from the original plan.
 
skidoo said:
I don't follow this either?? Are you also saying the most hazardous pilot are ones who are cautious? i.e., One who exercises a no-go decision due to caution is most hazardous?
Click to expand...

No, I'm saying the ones who don't realize their errors are the most hazardous.

On the average flight, I'll make about 3 mistakes, mostly minor and easily corrected for, I would figure most people do. Some people do not have the ability to admit to themselves that they made a mistake.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Magnetos, mechanical gyros, vapor lock prone fuel systems (vapor lock?!? in 2010?!?! YGBSM!), carburators, manual mixture control, fear of corrosion and delamination every year come inspection time, riverboat age spec old a$$ engines... and I'm supposed to fly "safely" in-cloud? I don't even do that in my car and at least I got ABS and traction control for my troubles. I got bicycle brakes and flintstone age tires in the airplane and I'm making contact with the pavement at a much faster speed than 75% of my daily driver speeds. Tis' the corners we cut to "afford" the priviledge of breaking contact with the earth. It shouldn't have to be this way.

Flying is not driving. Noted. Flying is a risky endeavor. Noted. But assuming one is not actively trying to kill oneself by pushing the issue in-flight, better technology would go a long way to allow me, as an individual participant of GA, to conduct a safer flight day in and day out. But I can't, because the market is hung on these 30+ y/o a$$ contraptions that wouldn't pass a cursory car tag inspection at the gas station. So the answer is to corner and price-out the market, which makes it even more economies-of-scale prone to cost bloating. Fewer people can afford to, so more and more choose to take a chance on old technology. Assuming a fixed nominal GA operator mission envelope (point A to point B with mostly VFR wx ahead and no upset attitudes), older technology yields a thinner margin for the peanut gallery to uncover his a$$ with, in an accident. But you need more peanut gallery in the business to drive down the production cost of phasing out the 30 yo spam can technology. In their absence, 30 yo spam can is what you get, never mind elitist. Might as well call it the UK. It's a catch.

My 0.02 pesos.
Click to expand...

We have three 172s. Two of them are M models, weighing around 1440 lb. empty. The third is a 2006 SP, weighing over 1750 lb and grossing 250 lb higher than the M's. To haul the extra weight, more horsepower is installed, and bigger fuel tanks to feed the extra horses.

Where does the extra weight come from? Mostly, it's the fancy electronic G1000 stuff. Lots of weight, believe me, much more than the old radios and gyros. Some of it is "safer" seats that are built a lot stronger and a shoulder-harness airbag system. If we added ABS and electronic ignition and electronic fuel injection, we'd add another bunch of thousand$ of cost and another 50 to 100 pounds to the empty weight, which either cuts into payload or we add more HP and more fuel and put up with ever-increasing stall speeds.

Your car doesn't have the weight issues the airplane has, and because many millions of them are built the economies of scale make it cost-effective.

If you want to fly, you'll have to accept old stuff for a long time yet or buy some really expensive and heavy airplanes. Shoot, an SR20 weighs empty nearly as much as a 172 grosses, and still only carries four people and has 200 hp. It's that "modern" composite construction that makes it heavy, along with safety features like parachutes. We can offer all kinds of opinions as to how much safer and cheaper the technology would make it, but I haven't seen that we have made significant progress on either front with said technology, and only made airplanes a lot heavier. And heavy airplanes are no fun to fly and tend to be much less forgiving. Opinions don't count for a lot in the field of small airplane design; it's the guys who actually are trying to make airplanes safer and more affordable that are pulling their hair out over this issue already. And every manufacturer is trying; they all see declining sales and the end of business if they can't fix it.

Dan
 
Last edited:
Mechanical issues cause less than 20% of the accidents. You guys are focusing on the wrong end of the problem.

Dan Thomas said:
We have three 172s. Two of them are M models, weighing around 1440 lb. empty. The third is a 2006 SP, weighing over 1750 lb and grossing 250 lb higher than the M's. To haul the extra weight, more horsepower is installed, and bigger fuel tanks to feed the extra horses.

Where does the extra weight come from? Mostly, it's the fancy electronic G1000 stuff. Lots of weight, believe me, much more than the old radios and gyros. Some of it is "safer" seats that are built a lot stronger and a shoulder-harness airbag system. If we added ABS and electronic ignition and electronic fuel injection, we'd add another bunch of thousand$ of cost and another 50 to 100 pounds to the empty weight, which either cuts into payload or we add more HP and more fuel and put up with ever-increasing stall speeds.

Your car doesn't have the weight issues the airplane has, and because many millions of them are built the economies of scale make it cost-effective.

If you want to fly, you'll have to accept old stuff for a long time yet or buy some really expensive and heavy airplanes. Shoot, an SR20 weighs empty nearly as much as a 172 grosses, and still only carries four people and has 200 hp. It's that "modern" composite construction that makes it heavy, along with safety features like parachutes. We can offer all kinds of opinions as to how much safer and cheaper the technology would make it, but I haven't seen that we have made significant progress on either front with said technology, and only made airplanes a lot heavier. And heavy airplanes are no fun to fly and tend to be much less forgiving. Opinions don't count for a lot in the field of small airplane design; it's the guys who actually are trying to make airplanes safer and more affordable that are pulling their hair out over this issue already. And every manufacturer is trying; they all see declining sales and the end of business if they can't fix it.

Dan
Click to expand...
 
wabower said:
Mechanical issues cause less than 20% of the accidents. You guys are focusing on the wrong end of the problem.
Click to expand...

I wasn't implying that mechanical issues were the problem. It was a discussion on how technology can or cannot make it easier to get into flying.

Dan
 
The most-needed technology is an "anti-dumbass chip" implanted in the current crop of pilots.

Dan Thomas said:
I wasn't implying that mechanical issues were the problem. It was a discussion on how technology can or cannot make it easier to get into flying.

Dan
Click to expand...
 
wabower said:
Mechanical issues cause less than 20% of the accidents. You guys are focusing on the wrong end of the problem.
Click to expand...
Yes, but the contribution of "mechanical stuff" to safety isn't limited to accidents that stem from mechanical failures.

There's much that can be done in the cockpit that can make crashes more survivable. There's also much that can be done to reduce the incidence of pilot errors. Just a simple thing like accurate fuel gauges and a low fuel warning would be a major boon. Weather info in the cockpit can be a major advantage, too, as can autopilots.

Of course, some of this is just speculation, I don't know that we have evidence to support it. The problem, of course, is that our data set is just so small that it's really hard to extract a lot of meaning out of it.
-harry
 
mantakos said:
Yes, but the contribution of "mechanical stuff" to safety isn't limited to accidents that stem from mechanical failures.

There's much that can be done in the cockpit that can make crashes more survivable. There's also much that can be done to reduce the incidence of pilot errors. Just a simple thing like accurate fuel gauges and a low fuel warning would be a major boon. Weather info in the cockpit can be a major advantage, too, as can autopilots.

Of course, some of this is just speculation, I don't know that we have evidence to support it. The problem, of course, is that our data set is just so small that it's really hard to extract a lot of meaning out of it.
-harry
Click to expand...

That's available for every airplane, has been for a long time, just have to pay for it. 20 years ago I had a Hoskins fuel flow on my plane, it was dead on accurate.
 
Wrong chip. Wrong guys. That one has been recalled.


dmccormack said:
I have the chip. It was vigorously installed by uber-fit guys wearing ridiculously pressed uniforms yelling stuff at 5 AM.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top