Too many accidents

[503]

I'm fairly new to this site and there seems to be a lot of accidents is this the norm?

 

This is reinforcing my latest choice to fly powered parachutes (used to fly ga) ppc seems a lot safer

 

 

[XP503]

I'm not going to get into this because I couldn't be bothered but I'll just say this. You're wrong, and ill-informed.

 

 

[Guest Yampy]

503... You are correct , there has been a lot of accidents unfortunately this year in particular. It certainly is not the norm , although a worrying trend all the same . I wish you luck in your ventures ..

 

 

[503]

I'm not going to get into this because I couldn't be bothered but I'll just say this. You're wrong, and ill-informed.

Wrong about what seems to me that there is a lot of bad news and a lot of this info is from this site,I hope that this is a unusually bad year.1 is to many

 

 

[Ultralights]

Sadly it has been an unusually bad start to the year, could be caused by the weather, the past 2 years summers have been atrocious flying seasons, and now we having periods of very good flying, so of course, flying activity increases, and sadly, so do the accidents. dont forget, that the Media reports on every single aircraft accident that happens, and usually gets the story spectacularly wrong, with huge over dramatisations, occasionally they get it accurate. also, being an aviation forum, every incident will get discussed at length as well.

 

Aviation incidents are probably the most over dramatised and heavily reported accident that can happen, outside of nuclear accidents, so to the general public, flying is dangerous.

 

even a manoeuvre as common and safe as a g0-around will make the papers if passengers are on board.

 

If the media reported every single car accident with the same vigour, you would never drive again.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I think we've had four unusually bad starts, and it's looking like normal is now.

 

 

[farri]

503

 

I'm fairly new to this site and there seems to be a lot of accidents is this the norm?

503, is it the norm? What is the norm?

 

I came into Ultralight flying, over 30 years ago. There were fatal and non fatal accidents before this time, as there have been since that time and my opinion is , unfortunately, for whatever reason, there will be into the future,as well!

 

This is reinforcing my latest choice to fly powered parachutes (used to fly ga) ppc seems a lot safer

Not sure about PPC being a lot safer! How much is a lot? The way I understand it, a parachute can collapse and deflate in turbulence. You may correct me if I am wrong.

 

Frank.

 

 

[Sapphire]

Ultralight said:If the media reported every single car accident with the same vigour, you would never drive again

 

That would be physically impossible-there would not be enough air time. Besides the rate of death and injury on the road is "socially acceptable" and not of great concern

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Aviation incidents are probably the most over dramatised and heavily reported accident that can happen, outside of nuclear accidents, so to the general public, flying is dangerous.

Indeed.

 

503, I come from a heavy motorsports background and have lost a number of friends from motocross, road racing, car racing and rallying over the years and then theres many others I never knew.

 

Then there's horse riding, how many broken necks have resuted from that hobby?

 

They don't get anywhere near the press that airplane crashes do, sometimes nothing at all.

 

 

[farri]

Then there's horse riding, how many broken necks have resuted from that hobby?

Couldn`t let that one go! I was only 17 years old when I lost control of a horse and was thrown off at full gallop, landing directly on my neck and shoulders, I could have been killed instantly. Never rode a horse again!Rode motor bikes instead!I found that I could control motorbikes.

 

Frank.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

I found that I could control motorbikes.

..and you throw them in the shed for a month and they don't care.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Couldn`t let that one go! I was only 17 years old when I lost control of a horse and was thrown off at full gallop, landing directly on my neck and shoulders, I could have been killed instantly. Never rode a horse again!Rode motor bikes instead!I found that I could control motorbikes.Frank.

Hi Frank,. . . . couldn't agree more, about horses. . . and not only that, your new 2 wheeled hobby cant give rise to any popular phrases or insults really can it, ? I mean, whoever told you that something you said was"Bike****" ( ! )

 

 

[Phil Perry]

I'm fairly new to this site and there seems to be a lot of accidents is this the norm?This is reinforcing my latest choice to fly powered parachutes (used to fly ga) ppc seems a lot safer

Hi 503. . .

 

I think that other posters have already covered the fact that the media have a penchant for "Overdoing it" with anything to do with aircraft incidents. Having flown most things, I'd have to conclude that you are more likely to end up in a wheelchair or worse when paragliding / or power parachting than GA, or flying microlights / LSA or whatever,. . . 2 of my old friends ( highly experienced ) were killed in separate incidents whilst operating powered parachute wings, one in a collision / tangle in Turkey, and the other in something possibly turbulence related but undetermined over a waterfall in Africa. I know another guy, now in a wheelchair, who has returned to microlight flying as ( in his own words ) on balance, it's safer. Maybe it could be something to do with the undercarriage ?

 

Anything to do with flammable fuels, being some distance off the ground, and machinery which accomplishes this, is ALWAYS going to carry with it a risk factor. This factor is either accepted or not and it is entirely YOUR decision.

 

Whilst I would be the first to agree that flying is not in itself inherently DANGEROUS, . . . . . It can seem to be a little unforgiving sometimes.

 

Phil

 

 

[turboplanner]

Interesting just how selective people's minds can be:

 

In Victoria, we have managed to get motor vehicle fatalities down from just under 1100 per year to flatten at around 300 per year.

 

Every one of them gets Television coverage and newspaper coverage at about the same level as private aircraft fatalities.

 

Often that coverage extends to background TV and newspaper stories on the effect of the accident on families and friends, and the local comunity

 

Sometimes documentaries are made about the accident.

 

You probably just aren't noticing it

 

 

[Guest sunfish]

Step 1: Obtain a database of RAA accidents.

 

Step 2: Without details of annual flying hours you are limited to calculating accidents per hundred aircraft, so do that. Try it on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis by year. (it would be really, really useful to collect hours flown data at each annual renewal if you aren't doinng it already)

 

Step 3: Calculate the mean and standard deviation for each over the entire period.

 

Step 4: Hypothesis testing: does any recent data lay OUTSIDE Three standard deviations from the mean?

 

If the answer is yes, you can be 99.9% certain that something has changed. Do the same and check for Two standard deviations will give you a 95% confidence level.

 

If nothing lies outside Two or Three standard deviations from the mean, you are looking at a statistical blip.

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

Step 1: The statistics for accidents can be found here http://www.recreationalflying.com/tutorials/safety/intro2.html

 

Or go to Resources, Tutorials, scroll down to Safety, RAA fatal accidents.

 

Step 2: The flying hours, number of landings etc for RAA aircraft each year can be found here http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/ongoing/general_aviation_activity.aspx

 

Step 3: Find someone who can do standard deviation calcs

 

Step 4: Interpret results

 

Job's half done already, however only for fatalities. The difficulty lies in gathering statistics for accidents and incidents - although they are supposed to be reported, not everyone does, or does it with sufficient detail, and RAA does not release it in sufficient detail either.

 

Sue

 

 

[facthunter]

Car safety has improved to the extent that to get it better will cost an increasing amount of money. A well maintained 3 axis plane would be as safe a way to get into the air as any. ( that is affordable to the average person)

 

Consider the stats..... work out how relevent they are to you. Do you have some way of reducing your risk by how you MANAGE your flying affairs? Ie how YOU will operate.

 

How much of the risk is outside your control? Don't over-react to sensation but evaluate the situation fully.

 

At the moment on the road I feel that the other persons skill /inattention /intoxication are significant risk factors that I have no control over, except to not trust other drivers much. I don't like that.

 

In the air, this is a factor too, but YOU control a lot of the elements of risk.

 

Ie Your skill level, recency, when you fly (weather, over water, bad terrain) How well your plane is inspected checked amd serviced. and YOUR attitude to safety . If you think" everybody misses seeing planes on final, You will die at some time anyhow. being carefull takes all the fun out of it, I wonder what happens if I do THIS and so on, Do something else. so you don't make the stats worse... Nev

 

 

[alf jessup]

Did some research a few years back on average annual deaths from flying (all types) and driving worldwide

 

Flying 3000 to 4000 per year

 

Driving 1.3 to 1.4 million

 

Yep I know plenty will say there are more cars on the roads than planes flying (True)

 

More idiot on the roads too

 

Flying is statistically safer than driving,

 

Its all up to you whether you survive the journey driving or piloting, just with piloting you got far less chance of being cleaned up by someone elses mistake.

 

Flying is a safe as you make it, in the end it is your desicions while flying which will determine your outcome at the end of the day.

 

Alf

 

 

[turboplanner]

Flying is a safe as you make it, in the end it is your desicions while flying which will determine your outcome at the end of the day.Alf

Agree Alf, and if we look back over the past four years nearly every one of the people lost could have taken a different decision path

 

The statistics do indeed show that flying is safer than driving a car but those statistics don't drill down to the "cluster" situations we find ourself in, where a culture which may have deteriorated over decades eventually exposes its members to greater levels of risks. You will see that in other forms of sport as well as flying.

 

I maintain that for voluntary/recreational activity it is not acceptable to have either deaths or injury, and while you may not achieve that perfect record, if you are aiming for it and focusing on it the figures remain low.

 

I've kept citing speedway safety in Victoria involving about 1500 drivers in what is a dangerous sport, and where there hasn't been a driver fatality in about 47 years - zero. That is not the same in other clusters in other States, and no doubt involves some luck, but it shows it can be achieved.

 

A good rule of thumb is if you know the person who has died you need to start helping others to readdress safety, whether it be construction, behaviour, training, administration, environment, checklists and so one.

 

CFI's, Instructors, and Clubs can always make a difference, if they want to, and so can the participants, although some of them need to be led, shown and assessed for understanding, or booted out, a good example being some individual posting about a happy day spent ignoring basic safe procedure, while the body of a pilot lay in a morgue most probably due to doing the exact same thing.

 

When clusters start to grow and join into regular statistics, in GA the pressure comes on CASA, DIT structure, and the Minister. In RA, self regulation, the pressure comes on the body which is supposed to be doing what I've outlined above, and when that isn't happening then things begin to change and never in the direction the participants (in this case flyers) want because the people making the changes (CASA, DIT, Minister) are in self preservation mode and the participants are expendable.

 

This particularly applies to non-essential activities and there are quite a few sports which no longer exist for safety, or other community pressure reasons.

 

So the question posed on this thread, is a timely one.

 

The four CASA audits are probably the starting point; if you go back to the time of the Sting crash, that one is just grinding its way through the courts now, with some embarrassing fallout which will affect us.

 

All the stall/spin crashes are yet to go through the system, and some of them could produce multi million dollar payouts; all the crashes will leave criticism of someone somewhere.

 

So now is the time to walk away from the people who say shit happens, now is the time to start methodically bullet proofing construction, procedures, training, responsibilities and all the complex things that can reduce these losses to zero.

 

 

[alf jessup]

Tubs,

 

Totally agree on what you have said.

 

I know, you know and many of the others on the forum know that a vast majority of the fatal accidents in recent years and up until now were preventable.

 

Just as an example I lost 2 friends at last years Natfly which in my belief was totally preventable, the recent one in Vic's NW where the pilot with his ticket for 2 weeks caught a wire beating up a mates place was preventable.

 

The major problem we have is people think it will happen to someone else and as we have seen it is not the case it can and will continue to happen until pilots attitudes change.

 

Flying is so beautiful but is also very unforgiving if your a risk taker, even if your not a risk taker it is unforgiving if you make a mistake.

 

**** doesn't happen humans make it happen.

 

I hate seeing all these accidents, more so I am concerned that CASA may take our privelages away if we keep killing people at the rate it seems to be going.

 

But what can we do? Induvidually we should strive for disciplined flying everytime we take control of an aircraft.

 

I am at a loss and don't like seeing this waste of life.

 

Alf

 

 

[Marty_d]

..and you throw them in the shed for a month and they don't care.

Schroedinger's horse?

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Don't dwell on the accidents too much. Bad for you life outlook.

 

 

[Yenn]

I hope to survive my flying fun and to do that I maintain a good healthy fear of it.

 

The human factors training and similar things seem so irrelevant to me because I do them automaticly, without having to study them. Learnt that from my initial training years ago.

 

 

[facthunter]

You were probably taught well Yenn. I wouldn't judge Human Factors by what you have been shown so far. Done properly everyone gets something from it. A lot of people are against it in principle and some of the most opposed to it come unstuck in 'testing of their performance"/ evaluation where this is done as part of some CRM courses. The human factors as doen by the RAAus so far is short of satisfactory. It may even had a negative effect by turning people off the concept. Nev

 

 

[Guest Crezzi]

The human factors as doen by the RAAus so far is short of satisfactory. It may even had a negative effect by turning people off the concept.

I don't disagree when some schools handle the subject by simply helping students get through the exam or covering the topic as a pointless box ticking exercise required to get a pilot cert.

 

Schools don't have to do it that way though (& some don't) but what would you suggest RAAus could have done other than introduce a mandatory exam ?

 

Cheers

 

John