Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

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> I’m not a licensed pilot, so I’m just arguing from my intuitive understanding of the risks involved.

> But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10% risk of serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and a 0.1% risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump.

I think your intuition is wildly off base w.r.t. the risks of general aviation and sky diving.

If you exclude experimental aircraft like fighter jets and kit builds, general aviation isn't much more dangerous than riding a motorcycle. The leading causes of death are misjudging the weather and miscalculating fuel because most of a pilot's training isn't in how to fly a plane but how to troubleshoot it midair or land safely if that is impossible.

An unplanned skydive in a mountainous area in Southern California during Santa Ana season? Now, that's risky. (Edit) For perspective, Nevada sky diving companies won't even jump over Black rock desert because of the wind and that's a desert so big and flat that it's used for amateur rocketry in the 100k+ feet range.

> If you exclude experimental aircraft like fighter jets and kit builds, general aviation isn't much more dangerous than riding a motorcycle.

Sure, but now we’re talking about a situation where your engine has already failed… That’s very different.

> Sure, but now we’re talking about a situation where your engine has already failed… That’s very different.

What to do on engine failure is one of the first things they teach you after basic flight lessons. After that many instructors will even simulate surprise engine failure by cutting off the engine at random while the student is trying to learn about some other emergency situation. Engine failure is part of the check rides every pilot needs to pass to get a license.

You said one of the leading causes of death was miscalculating fuel. I.e., engine failure. (I assume you don't mean weight miscalculation)

By that logic the only cause of death in GA is "plane hit the ground."

When the engine stops working because it doesn't get enough fuel because there's nothing left in the tanks, the root cause is not putting enough fuel in the tanks, not engine failure.

> By that logic the only cause of death in GA is "plane hit the ground."

Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29731719 it seems like you are essentially saying "engine failure is not too dangerous; one of the leading causes of death is running out of fuel".

I did not say running out of fuel should be formally classified as an engine failure. It was more that I supposed that the effect on the airworthiness of their airplane should be approximately the same whether the engine stops due to failure or running out of fuel. So that makes your comment appear contradictory. Hence my prompting for an explanation, I'm quite willing to believe I misunderstood something of your post or about aviation so I didn't intend for it to sound glib.

My apologies, this discussion leans heavily into federally mandated jargon that has very recently been drilled into my head and it's all to easy to forget how overloaded the words are - as an SWE in my day job the irony is almost palpable.

I'm only a flightsimmer but even fighter jets can probably make it to somewhere with the kind of energy he had. A Space Shuttle or a Blackbird might have been a different story. If you're busting through Autobahn at 240mph and the car suddenly goes neutral, trucks coming up behind is going to be quite low on the list of immediate dangers.

I live not too far from where this was supposed to take place, and November is not a bad time for winds. If you go further East (or South as people say here) that may change, but Lompoc -> Mammoth ending somewhere described as "50 miles N of Santa Barbara" doesn't seem like it would take you there.

I only pointed out the Santa Ana winds to emphasize the "unplanned" portion. Even a 10-20 mph gust is enough to bash a skydiver against a rock outcrop, and (in my experience) that's the equivalent of a light morning breeze in mountainous regions.

I think it's pretty obvious this was staged and he very carefully chose the landing spot.

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