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Comment by chrissnell | Hacker News Reader

My dad has his license and used to fly all the time. I told him I was interested in doing it, too, now that I have the money and he basically said, "Hell no, don't do it." His reasoning is that general aviation crashes are often fatal because you have very little time to react in the event of a problem and most private pilots simply don't have sufficient hours to have the muscle memory and awareness to react appropriately in an instant. He said it takes years of flying before you are a safe enough pilot to, say, bring your family along. He told me to search the news around Christmastime every year and that you'll see a family of four that died in a crash. Pilots get overeager to just get someplace and take risks and then their number comes up and they can't respond to it quickly enough.

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Around three-quarters of accidents are due to pilot error, and about 15% of non-commercial fixed-wing accidents are fatal[0]. Flying more often keeps skills sharp. Get-there-itis is a mindset that a good instructor and other pilots will warn you against. Launching into conditions for which the pilot is unqualified for is suicidal. Winter flying adds the potential hazard of airframe icing. Accidents at night are more likely to be fatal. Believe it or not, some pilots simply fail to take enough fuel to complete the mission.

The concept of the accident chain runs contrary to the assertion that a pilot needs to react instantaneously to a potential issue. The problem commonly begins long before the situation becomes an emergency, perhaps even on the ground. Break any link in the chain to prevent tragedy.

[0]: https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institut...

The stats don’t really indicate that. It’s not low time pilots doing the crashing really, at least not disproportionately. One very common cause is engine failure due to fuel problems, which means that a pilot didn’t check the tank, put the wrong fuel in, didn’t check for water, etc.

Even in GA the vast majority of accidents are something simple like that.

You have quite a bit of time at altitude to react and your training is largely about that. Unless it’s engine failure on takeoff or something

I stopped my training after deciding that I wasn’t confident in myself to avoid such “simple” issues. I’m pretty distractible and even had trouble following checklists to some degree. I’m sure having a baby on the way contributed, but I’m still content with the decision today.

Severe ADHD? Either way good on you for knowing your limitations.

GA aircraft are fairly slow and reflexes usually aren't an issue (with a few VERY notable exceptions, such as cross controlled stalls). Most accidents start with bad judgement, such as flying overweight on hot days.

> general aviation crashes are often fatal

For the record something like 85% of GA crashes have no fatalities. A Cessna 172 will fly down to 40 knots, which is significantly slower than a car crash on the highway.

Sure, slower in absolute terms.

But a car crash on a highway typically involves two moving vehicles, reducing the delta at impact.

Moreover, cars are engineered specifically to protect occupants during a collision. They have safety cages, airbags, crumple zones, and can even be inverted and still sustain the passenger volume. A crashing airplane will not be able to protect its occupants in the same way.

Well, most “crashes” in a plane are basically just a minor bad landing. Someone touched a wing or forgot to put their landing gear down.

Aircraft too are designed to be resilient in certain collisions. Not head on with the ground, but you’d be surprised how survivable crash landings are.

Landing without your gear down does not seem like a 'minor bad landing'. Seems like a very major mistake to make?

Well your insurance company is going to be really pissed but you’re likely going to walk away. Hulls are designed to withstand that.

> But a car crash on a highway typically involves two moving vehicles, reducing the delta at impact.

This doesn't seem correct.

perhaps they're thinking of two vehicles moving in the same direction. Many (most?) highways have separations between oncoming traffic lanes.

How not? If car A and car B are traveling on parallel routes at speeds X and Y, then their speed delta is |X-Y|, which will always be < X and < Y unless one of them is driving into oncoming traffic.

I am an instrument rated private pilot. What your dad told you is true but is also mostly preventable. Sometimes there are accidents that you don't know ahead of time will happen: I've had a friend who died on a local flight trying to challenge himself with strong winds in a mountainous airport, had a heart attack and died. However, that kind of accidents, equipment failure accidents are in the minority. Most accidents are pilot error. That's been studied a lot in general aviation. The conclusion is that most general aviation accidents are preventable. Pilot going into situations that a little planning and thought could prevent. [0]

As a private pilot it is mostly your choice what situation you put yourself through. To survive being a pilot you need a certain amount of humility and understanding your limitations. Also a lot of planning, including contingency plans on what to do if you get stuck somewhere or if the weather gets bad. You are not an airline, you do not have the equipment and resources they do and you should plan accordingly. This should be part of your training and it is up to you to maintain this as you fly.

If you are interested, a good book on the subject of general aviation accidents and as it relates to private pilots is The Killing Zone, Second Edition: How & Why Pilots Die by Paul Craig. Very readable book.

Additionally, aviation accidents are studied by many people in the industry and there are checklists to follow before and during the flight (IM SAFE [1], PAVE[2]. etc...) that should help you to determine if you even should make the flight. There are also automated tools that calculate based on your experience and the environmental conditions if its a go/no go [3] and if you stick to these things they would make you a very safe pilot. So I wouldn't let a fear of getting into an accident stop you from being a pilot but be smart and follow the rules, set yourself some conservative personal minimums, follow the checklists, and plan, plan, plan and you should be safe.

[0] The Nall Report, the gold standard: https://www.aopa.org/-/media/files/aopa/home/training-and-sa... [1]https://www.thebalancecareers.com/the-i-m-safe-checklist-282... [2] https://www.faa.gov/training_testing/training/fits/guidance/... [3] AOPA used to have a go/no-go decision maker can't find the link.

I'm halfway through Killing Zone right now and I've found it enormously helpful. Great recommendation

Thank you, that was very reassuring.

> most private pilots simply don't have sufficient hours to have the muscle memory and awareness to react appropriately in an instant

An ex fighter pilot told me he wish more commercial (and private pilots) would have more time in planes that fly upside down. The JFK Jr. death/spacial distortion thing is real, and having experience in odd orientations really helps with that.

JFK Jr.’s crash[0] clearly shows the accident chain beginning on the ground. He’d injured his ankle in a snowboarding accident a few weeks prior and was wearing a boot that may have interfered with operating the rudder. His magazine was in rough shape, and his marriage wasn’t much better. They’d intended to leave during the day, but his wife and sister-in-law didn’t arrive at the airport until close to dark. His instructor had offered to fly with him, but Kennedy turned him down. Flying at night over open water, especially on a moonless night, can create the black hole effect. Although it’s technically VMC, you’re really flying by instruments. The accident airplane had a working autopilot that he knew how to use, but it wasn’t engaged. Kennedy had some instrument training but not the rating. He passed tens of airports on his way where he could have stopped. He’s a Kennedy and could have summoned transportation.

The common belief is he became spatially disoriented and entered a graveyard spiral without realizing it. Without outside visual reference, our senses can play nasty tricks on us and that instrument pilots train to ignore.

The sad part is it was all preventable: he had so many opportunities to break the accident chain that was forming.

[0]: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2010/july/pilot...

Would this be solved by making it mandatory for all aircraft to have a HUD with an artificial horizon?

Also it seems like a level 5 autopilot should be possible, and obviously making that mandatory would be a perfect solution.

All do have an artificial horizon. Your attitude indicator has that.

Making autopilot mandatory would make a huge amount of GA pilots unable to fly due to cost. And I’m not sure It would help. JFK JR’s plane had one. (level 5 is not even available for GA, though auto land just launched, but it would be six figures. )

The problem is you don’t know when you’re spinning in the first place without visual reference. Pilots get disoriented (the g force from the spin can feel a lot like normal gravity) and get overwhelmed.

That particular incident was an overly confident, poorly skilled pilot doing something risky that most pilots simply wouldn’t

No amount of instruments will make flying a plane safe if the pilot isn't trained on how to operate the plane _only_ using instruments.

It's very counterintuitive to operate a vehicle, and force yourself to ignore all visual cues from outside the cockpit.

The accident airplane had both, although steam gauges and not a HUD. The pilot has to know how to use the gadgets and actually do so.

Scheduled airlines, FAR Part 121, are much safer for several reasons: pilots have much more training and at least 1,500 flight hours, they’re all instrument rated, they have mandatory recurrent training, companies drill Standard Operating Procedures, two pilots: one flying with the other monitoring, a dispatcher on the ground is pitching in too, flying IFR, talking to ATC, often making stable straight-in approaches. In short, mucho redundancy means one person’s bad decision won’t immediately imperil the flight.

Like the accident chain, the fix has to start early in primary training. Pilots need to be taught to have a healthy respect for the weather and hazards like airframe icing. Pilots have to make humble, conservative decisions and be willing to tell ourselves and our passengers or even ATC no. Frank, critical self-evaluation is not a skill we’re born with either. We have to be taught and remind each other to be on guard against the five hazardous attitudes (invulnerability, impulsivity, macho, anti-authority, and resignation). We have to continue cultivating a culture of safety that encourages good aeronautical decision making rather than foolish or brash risk taking. We have to look for opportunities to create redundancy in our own personal SOPs.

Aviation hardware is absurdly expensive. Not only do you get to pay an A&P to install it but the gadgets are silly expensive. Think we were quoted almost $1800 to add a USB charging port to a C180.

'Flying upside down' is certainly valuable (I offer spin training to all my students who want it, since it does not require a parachute) but it would not be very helpful in the case of weather related disorientation. JFK accident was more of a failure in decision-making than the piloting skills. 'Do not fly angry or upset' is a basic rule. It is incredible what people decide to do after gaining just a modicum of confidence. Even those who claim they are obsessed with safety. I had an airplane owner and a student who once tried to convince me to fly a twin after one of the engines shut down on take off (fortunately we were still slow)! His family was on board! He was not my student for much longer.

Would you attribute this to mechanical failures or situational complications (say, getting caught in a mountain rotor)?

Three-quarters of accidents are due to pilot error.[0]

[0]: https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institut...

Maybe he had a close call.

I heard it is roughly comparable, statistically, to being about twice as dangerous as motor cycle riding.

Correction: On par with motorcycles risk http://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/#:~:text=At...

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