I am completely against any "disruption" in the airline industry via safety arbitrage.
Keeps them on the news as the "thinking of how to make stuff cheaper". Note how this has toned down in the past year or so, because the "as cheap as possible" thing was backfiring on them
Some answers to the question "Difference between CPL and ATPL":
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-CPL-and...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/18vzuj/can_someone_...
It’s a perfectly fine hobby if you respect it, and there’s no sense discouraging otherwise qualified folks from flying. GA is already in severe decline.
I think when GP wrote "commercial airliners are safe... small private craft, not as much", they meant it from the POV of a passenger.
I don’t have a source at hand, but IIRC flying a private plane is one of the better and more reliable ways to get yourself hurt or killed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Pr...
"The National Transportation Safety Board found that in 2011, 94 percent of fatal aviation accidents occurred in what’s called general aviation. That category includes private small planes flown by amateurs as well as professionally piloted corporate flights in high-powered aircraft, such as the Gulfstream IV jet that crashed in May in Bedford, Mass., killing all seven people on board. By contrast, commercial aviation had no fatal accidents that year. Statistics from the N.T.S.B. show that general aviation aircraft average nearly seven accidents per 100,000 flight hours, compared with an average of 0.16 accidents per 100,000 hours for commercial airlines."
Emphasis mine.
I've see motorcycles without helmet last time I was down south in the fall and it scares the absolute beejesus bonkers out of me :/
(I've been riding for a decade, do occasional dirt trails, and have doing motorsport rallying a while back, but never enough of a daredevil to mount a bike without helmet and armour)
In the past there was pressure from the federal government on state governments to enact more universal laws about wearing helmets. Now many states only require that young riders wear helmets and a handful don't have any rule. Here is an overview with a map, too: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/helmetuse/mapmotorcycle...
It varies by state; this is one of those occasions where the federal government leaves it up to each state to mandate as they please. You might be surprised to learn that Georgia, a deeply Republican (i.e. anti-regulation) state, has strict requirements for motorcycle safety including mandatory helmets for any vehicle classed as a motorcycle.
Also, motorcycles without helmets!?!?!?!?!?!?!? America, I presume?
Commuting on a motorcycle, you should wear a helmet. Pleasure ride on the weekends, maybe not. Let the person make the decision. Seems good to me. America.
* Helmets saved an estimated 1,772 lives in 2015.
* If all motorcyclists would have worn helmets in 2015, 740 more could have been saved.
* Helmets reduce the risk of death by 37%.
* Helmets reduce the risk of head injury by 69%
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/mc/index.html
Wear your helmet. Do it for yourself and your family, and never tell anyone NOT to wear a helmet. Seriously!
Just because one wants to enjoy a risky activity doesn't mean one has no common sense or self-preservation instinct.
I wouldn't smoke, ride without a helmet, etc, but who am I to say you are wrong for doing so? There are many people who would not sign up for a trip to Mars, but I would. Who are they to tell me I am wrong for a wanting this?
Wait, when did I accuse anyone of insanity?
> "I wouldn't smoke, ride without a helmet, etc, but who am I to say you are wrong for doing so?"
I never said anyone was wrong for anything. I think you meant to reply to person I replied to above; you and I seem to agree more or less.
Kids driving on mopeds, on the other hand, is a different story. Even though they only drive at low speeds, they get hurt really badly even in minor accidents because they don’t wear protective clothing.
Yes, motorcycling is dangerous, but your clothes make a huge difference.
As a former and future rider, I always wear a full helmet, but people have the legal right to ride without one.
If we were going for maximum safety for transportation, uncaged motor transport would be prohibited.
It's also a legal requirement to wear helmets when riding a pushbike too, which is something far more controversial as there's research to suggest that the effect those laws have on reducing cycling participation has a more negative impact on visibility and safety of cyclists. But I don't think I've ever heard someone say that mandatory motorbike helmet laws are a bad thing.
There is research which shows that the trend towards higher vehicular weight is caused by drivers desire to be, or at least feel, safer. Yet this makes less economically fortunate drivers less safe, has adverse impact on the environment, and doesn't improve human welfare.
Why do we regulate helmets and not vehicular weight? It might have less to do with improving welfare and more to do with individual politics. I fear people have more of a tendency to want to be an authority over personal liberties than of unwarranted aggressions. For example, how long have people protested gay relationships, but allowed sexual harassment to persist?
...which people in general seem to have no particular fear of.
> [...] show that general aviation aircraft average nearly seven accidents per 100,000 flight hours, compared with an average of 0.16 accidents per 100,000 hours for commercial airlines.
So the accident rate for GA is over 40 times higher than commercial.
On top of that, around three quarters of these fatal accidents are the result of what could be broadly categorized as pilot error... Which is why the FAA has such a stick up its butt about the licensing status of the TapJets pilots.
Plane accidents are much more likely to result in fatalities
Or, to express it more charitably - we're all used to it. Car-related fatalities no longer register as unusual. You don't hear much about them in the news. They're treated as "something that unavoidably happens to people". Like cancer or heart attack, and unlike murder, which is unusual. I'm willing to bet that you're friends or acquaintances with people who crashed their cars (with or without health consequences), and you're at most two hops in your social graph from people who died in a car accident.
People often say things like "Plane crashes are very rare" but they're (often unconsciously) conflating "Plane crash" with "Scheduled commercial aviation accident resulting in fatalities". _Plane crashes_ happen all the time, because people fly planes and people are idiots. They forget to put enough fuel in the plane, they don't check the engine works properly, they do maintenance and forget to put back important components... they lose track of where they are, they make bad decisions, they don't plan things properly in advance, they ignore warnings, it never ends.
Commercial aviation is safe _despite_ these problems, and one of the ways that's achieved is by having rules that everybody has to follow, and by incrementally improving those rules in the light of what is learned from both accidents (which are rare) and incidents short of accidents (reported anonymously to ASRS at NASA). Not following the rules to be "disruptive" will get people killed.
What i mean - is the dominant cause human error, or is it just normal, random failures paired with a low margin environment ?!
IMHO electric planes should be more reliable and easier on the pilot, but they may never really be a thing without a major breakthrough in batteries.
1. Loss of Control Inflight
2. Controlled Flight Into Terrain
3. System Component Failure – Powerplant
4. Fuel Related
5. Unknown or Undetermined
6. System Component Failure – Non-Powerplant
7. Unintended Flight In IMC
8. Midair Collisions Low
9. Low-Altitude Operations
10. Other
Items 5 and 10 give us no information. We can charitably let pilots off the hook on 3 and 6, but the root cause might be inadequate preflight inspection or maintenance.
The rest are clearly pilot error.
(1) Loss of control is commonly (aerodynamic) stalls that sometimes lead to spins, and a large number of those tend to occur on the same turn in the airport traffic pattern just before landing.
(2) Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) means the pilot flew the airplane right into the ground, a mountain, buildings, or water. The pilot failed to recognize or prevent an impending collision.
(4) Fuel mismanagement is one of the most preventable on the list. Take enough fuel for your mission plus the required legal reserve! Math is hard, though. If I have fifty-gallon tanks and burn 16 gallons per hour, that’s four hours of fuel. In other cases, impatience or being a cheapskate not wanting to take on fuel for a short mission is the culprit. Arrogantly proclaiming “I know this airplane” will do it too. Pilots say the only time you can have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.
(7) Unintended flight into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) means accidentally flying into clouds, fog, precipitation, haze, and so on. Flying in IMC requires an adequately equipped airplane (A TOMATO FLAMES plus GRABCARD[1]), an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance from Air Traffic Control (ATC), and an instrument-rated pilot with IFR currency. This means additional training, preparation, and proficiency. Without outside reference to the horizon, humans are subject to all sorts of dangerous sensory illusions. An instrument-rated pilot must navigate solely by reference to the flight instruments, not an easy skill. A study with dubious methods concluded that after unintended flight into IMC, a pilot has 178 seconds[2] to live.
(8) In Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC, the opposite of IMC), all pilots have see-and-avoid responsibility for obstacles and other aircraft. Pilots on IFR flight plans are guaranteed ATC services. Pilots on Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flight plans may optionally obtain VFR traffic advisories, also known as flight following. When aircraft are close together, ATC will point out traffic (other aircraft), e.g., “Cessna 123AB, traffic two o’clock, five miles, six thousand, southeast bound.” A collision in IMC might be due to ATC error, namely loss of required aircraft separation, but those cases are the exception.
(9) Low-altitude operations means flying near the ground. A common example of this is crop dusters. Those guys are crazy. Hotdogging pilots buzzing their friends on the ground is a foolish example that leads to accidents. Think of YouTube videos of someone in a Cub flying low over a river with trees on either side. As you noted, this is an extremely low-margin environment. Over a congested area, pilots are required to remain at least a thousand feet above the ground, which is still extremely low. Sparsely populated areas and open water have no legal restrictions, and the rest require at least a 500-foot buffer. All of those are still extremely close to the ground and require a sharp pilot. Power lines, antennae, towers, bridges, and trees are all potentially fatal obstacles.
[0]: https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=2...
I think it's also one of the more expensive ways of achieving this, too. Although I'd love to see some statistics on this, using some appropriate units. Something like 'dollars per death per mile-year' maybe? Anyone have thoughts on how to source the data and/or calculate this properly?
This is a society level agreement I am absolutely baffled by. Most people can't or at least not well and there are not studies I know into this. Reflexes, decision making processes etc are all lacking in case something bad happens.
Edit: thanks for the swift, numerous downvotes! Care to link a few studies so I can learn more where I am wrong?
You may not like that tradeoff but most people disagree.
The full set of regulations maybe, but I believe you could retain the "most adults can drive" level while making everyone go through much stricter training and licensing regime. Right now in Europe and US, the required training and examinations are ridiculously weak (amounts to basically explaining the UI of the car and going over the basic maneuvers until the point you no longer spectacularly fail at them). It only shows that as a society, we never grew the required respect for the driving. I think it's because back when the expectations set, there were much less cars on the road.
The price we pay for that is grimly high.
You mean, someone who hasn't passed a driving test? Or someone who had their license revoked?
Qualified drivers are dangerous. Unqualified unsupervised drivers are a lethality to everyone.
A safety arbitrage play means a company is attempting to turn a profit by selling a cheaper asset deemed unsafe at the same price as a safe one or a bit less.
If the unsafe asset is actually as 100% safe as the safe one, then they have played a valid arbitrage.
If the unsafe asset however is actually unsafe, then they are running a scam.
It’s a pretty common play in some developing economies.
If 10 firms start out, and 1 survives to profitability, that single firm's P/L will show gains, but the industry net won't.
That's not true profit, but a probabilistic artefact of essentially winning a sequence of bets.
There may also be gains possible if the survivor can increase scale of operations and/or start mitigating risks that smaller players cannot. This is another path to monopoly advantage that is based, again, on effectively winning early chance-based trials, and then ratcheting in an ever-larger risk advantage as compared to smaller players.
I have a friend who was a driver for Uber, and they got in a wreck. Surprise, since it was a commercial drive (got paid) their personal insurance didn't cover anything. Uber has left them hanging with their promise that they'd fix it up in smoke. The insult to injury was that insurance was legally obligated to report to the state that they were "driving with no insurance". Yeah, fun.
If you drive for Uber/Lyft and use personal insurance, you are in actuality likely running with no insurance if you're being paid for the trip.
Likely, this 'nonprofit' or whatever they're trying to claim was trying to be "Ubercab of the Air". And the FAA is rightly in smacking them down quick. We don't need "$89 trips across the country" that include the fact that 'whoops, we lost 2 airplanes in the Atlantic, and sry, no insurance, too bad so sad'.
A properly trained crew sounds great, but then comes the question of definitions. Less than five years ago[1], it was legal for a first officer in an FAA Part 121 operation to hold no more than a commercial ticket, minimum aeronautical experience 250 flight hours. Airplanes were not falling out of the sky then with the now-improperly trained crews. Perhaps more flight hours were necessary, but the bar for properly trained crew may really lie at 300, 500, or a thousand hours rather than 1,500.
Maybe number of flight hours like KSLOC is not such a useful metric. Current ATP minimums may nail it exactly. How shall we verify the answer?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
[1]: https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...