Swedish Pirate Bay co-founder Carl Lundström dies in plane crash | Hacker News Reader

Swedish Pirate Bay co-founder Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

thelocal.se

40 pointsJerry212 comments

Note to self, if I ever get rich fight the urge to get into flying. I don't know the stats off hand, but the number of people that die in small plane crashes seems quite high.

You can easily rent one of them as a moderately wealthy person.

I'm not sure if that is biased by the fact that small plane owners (ie rich people) are more likely to be known by the public and make the news.

He lived in Switzerland and was commuting from Croatia back to his home. So I'm guessing he did this quite often.

A lot of people around me who were involved in Piratbyrån and the underground scene here in Sweden back then are saying this was a perfect way for him to fake his death since he had substantial debts incurred from the Pirate Bay legal case.

But I think small private aircraft are involved in a lot more accidents than large airliners.

I don't really see how a plane crash is an easy way to fake a death... Plane crashes get a lot of investigation, and investigators will surely notice when the pilot's body is one stolen from a morgue and the real pilot bought a spare parachute from eBay which is nowhere to be found.

I don't believe he did it either, but the parachute isn't the problem, it's the body.

The body would have to be missing all teeth and have undergone extreme incineration. Not to mention he'd have to acquire one from somewhere where life is cheap, and bring it to Croatia.

And only then he might get away until forensics catch on.

A generated page was all I could find, but it looks like the general/private aviation fatality rate is around 0.0002% (per flight hour) vs 0.00003% for commercial carriers.

And on a decreasing trend.

Obviously, when celebrities are involved, you hear about it though.

https://simpleflying.com/private-jet-crashes-per-year-2023/ https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/business/airplane-crashes-sta...

So private aviation is 666% more dangerous than commercial (e.g. 0.0002 / 0.00003 = 6.66...) That is significant, but commercial is incredibly safe.

I wonder what the death rate for flying yourself around, e.g. part-time pilots, is versus professional private plane pilots. I would think that part-time amateur pilots is where the real danger is - it is a hobby thing.

This guy wasn't flying in a private jet with a professional, hired pilot. He was flying himself in a propeller-driven Mooney M20.

Additionally I wonder what the stats looks like when comparing the middle class aviation nerd who spend pretty much every spare penny they can afford on their airplane, vs the guy with a few million in inheritance.

Motorcycles will also do it. They are twice as bad as general aviation. Also rock climbing, base jumping, skiing and hang gliding.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Deaths-per-100-million-h...

Although the figures are all over the place depending on the source and how you group activities. GA is usually a lot safer than paramotor for instance.

https://www.tetongravity.com/story/News/your-chances-of-dyin...

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43352580

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