Originally Posted by
gcolyer
....All the failures I have had could quiet easily have casued an accident....
Yes, but yours were incidents, and one has to accept these come along reasonably frequently in the rental fleet. Training stops them becoming an accident, as does the fact that most incidents aren't going to kill you anyway unless you really mess it up - again pilot error.
Have found the reliability data for flying complex single engine piston aircraft now. It's on a NASA site at .. er, sorry new rules say I cannot provide the link
You will all just have to trust me. The figures are based on the probability that the airframe and engine will succesfully complete a 700mile flight.
Airframe 99.940%
Engine 99.986%
Surprisingly to me anyway, at first glance the engine appears more reliable than the airframe, but I suspect it might not be a significant difference.
Looking at NTSB accident rates, and again you have to trust me on this, in 1997 accross the whole US, the accident rate due to airframe failure was given as approx 0.3 per 100,000 hours flown. The fatal accident rate due to airframe failure was given as approx 0.08 per 100,000 hours flown.
So now you have the figures, decide for yourself whether the risk of parts falling off is worth the reward.
Of course, people are scared of flying on airlines, and the same people also know it's the safest form of transport out there. So there is a psychological issue here which statistics will not fix.