When reading thesis, I always jump to the Conclusion chapter to see what it’s all about. In the last paragraph of the conclusion, this is found:
Whilst commercial aviation enjoys the benefit of research by top level organisations such as NASA,
producing the safest form of transport in modern society, UK GA and GA in general does not earn
similar interest or importance, resulting in a level of safety far below that experienced by airline
passengers and an average fatal accident rate of approximately one death per month in the UK
alone.
Someone needs to get real here. One death per months in the UK with a population of 65 million people is nothing. How many fatal road accidents are there in the UK per month? I would bet a couple of hundred based on the population, and several thousands are severely crippled with no chance of getting back to the lives they lived before.
I also browsed through some of it, and found that 93% of the GA pilots are recreational pilots. So, one deaths per month in a population of 65 million, for people doing a small niche recreational activity, where everyone involved are very much aware of the risks, is that really something anyone should care about, except exclusively the little niche being involved with it?
Things are taken out of context here. The only way to improve those numbers (no matter how silly small they are in a typical population), is to get rid of private GA altogether. The only way to improve the rate (death per flown hour or similar), is to create a situation where people fly much more, increase the average proficiency. However, the numbers and statistics are such that there is no way to increase the average proficiency without also increasing the numbers of deaths in absolute terms. I mean, life is dangerous, you can even die from it.
I largely agree. I’ve often wondered about the effect of currency on accident statistics
The more frequently we fly, the more experienced and the more proficient we become (but arguably also more complacent) and yet as stated, in absolute terms, the more exposed to risk we are.
The less we fly, the less proficient but arguably the more cautious we are, and of course also less exposed to absolute risk.
Do these factors all cancel one another out, meaning that the risk is simply a constant, and goes with the territory and we just have to accept it and live with it.?
I think what happens is that as annual hours go down, most pilots are smart enough to realise they are losing competence, and that they need to restrict their mission profile, so eventually they fly “sunny Sundays” only.
That is called “risk compensation” and is a huge factor in GA.
I have never met a real “thicko” who has a PPL. There are plenty of strange people flying 
and a lot of “big characters” who are a total PITA when they get their teeth into volunteer organisations, but all these people are pretty clever.
However there are other things going on. Some of the “meaningless accidents” mentioned earlier were high-hour pilots.
Peter wrote:
That is called “risk compensation” and is a huge factor in GA.
Is it really? Most accidents are loss of control, and can easily be traced back to little proficiency or little competence. Most deadly accidents happens in cruise, and the main reason is technical error, thus pretty much independent of pilot proficiency, except perhaps too little training with emergency landings? if the cause was engine failure (usually is).
Seems to me the only risk compensation worth doing is to do lots of touch and goes (that also will increase the total risk, but reduce the accident per our, which is good for eventual passengers), and if spending lots of time in cruise, then get a DA42 (or some other good twin), a Cirrus (or something else with chute) or a SET (an engine that won’t stop out of the blue), or something you can land just about anywhere without dying (a bush plane or a microlight or something else with a low stall speed, and train for it every now and then). If you are to trust that thesis of course Both these risk compensation techniques are probably as ancient as flying itself, and has proven to work.
The latest……..
http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2017/10/f … -2017.html
Non instrument rated, 100 foot ceiling, owned the plane for a year. What could go wrong?
Duff link above.
LeSving wrote:
Most accidents are loss of control, and can easily be traced back to little proficiency or little competence. Most deadly accidents happens in cruise, and the main reason is technical error,
I thought most of them were CFIT?
I think Peter’s point is that the incident and fatality rates don’t trail off as much as you would expect when people get more training/more capable gear, because they use those excess capabilities to undertake more dangerous missions. To be sure, it isn’t 100%, but there is clearly something going on.
First cause of accidents are loss-of-control, most during take-offs and landings, some in cruise (unexpected IMC in VFR)
Second is CFIT in cruise (mostly, ahem, unintentional IMC)
The two come from a single fact : the pilot got too far from his “safety zone”.
Two reasons :
- he is unexperienced and didn’t understand his mistake
- he is more experienced but he made a bad decision.
Two types of persons making bad decisions :
- the one “I knew something would happen to him one day”
- the others, which are everyone like us, that try to enjoy our licenses.
I don’t know any guarantee from making mistakes, which is what we are talking about.
Since I got my license I truly changed my way of flying from a “let’s see what the weather allows me to do today ?” to a “I want to go to X event via GA, what can I implement to use my PPL as much as possible safely ?”.
I think, even for the most cautious pilot, the amount of “practical” use of your PPL is strictly proportional to the risk you take in general.
Of course an IR and good currency reduces this risk.
But even the best ones can badly assess his situation (lack of info, overconfidence on a single data, generally the one that makes you think your flight is doable).
My conclusion : for a given pilot/aircraft, the more you use GA to go places, the more risk you take.
Problem is : if you never use your license for anything, most active persons will drop it out someday, except the most passionate ones.
The industry worked hard to produce simple, predictable handling, with benign stall characteristics aircraft: namely the Cessna 172 and taper wing Piper Warrior/Archer.
These fixed gear, fixed pitch aircraft still retain a superior safety record, mainly by suffering less loss of control fatalities.
