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Old 2nd Jan 2012, 04:31
  #39 (permalink)  
abgd
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: The Wild West (UK)
Age: 45
Posts: 1,151
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Sure one could analyse the AAIB reports and plot them according to commander TT, but let's say there is a peak at 500hrs. It tells us nothing unless we know the distribution of flying hours etc.
It's a very good point, but even with this information I doubt there would be sufficient UK data in order to determine anything with confidence. There were only 140 fatal GA aeroplane accidents between 1985 and 1994, for example. This would be too few for it to be valid to include many categories using ANCOVA. And I can think of loads of categories - mission (aerobatics, x-country, ifr), twins, singles, turboprop, currency, gender, age... that might be significant.

Perhaps it also reflects your situation, which is that you fly interesting and demanding x-countries in sometimes challenging conditions in a complex aircraft (yes, I spent an interesting few hours on your website). I'm interested in low airtime pilots in simple aircraft because that's me, and I'd be delighted if I could analyse only such pilots, as I agree it would make the analysis more valid. But both areas are interesting.

I would expect, though, that you wouldn't find any sharp peaks amongst private pilots. Without the tyranny of a schedule, some people will get complex or aerobatic training right away, whilst others may take much longer. In my view you'd be more likely to see gradual trends, perhaps with an initial peak +- a dip. You might find an exception to this at around 200 hours, due to the 'dropout' as modular students converted their ppls to cpls.

What you might still be able to do usefully, would be to exclude the concept of a substantial 'killing zone', or at least put an upper limit on how large the effect is. And you could potentially draw on other sources to support your interpretations.

I appreciated Big Piston's point that, at the end of the day, the important thing is to know what the most common types of accidents are, and avoid the accident du jour.

Last edited by abgd; 2nd Jan 2012 at 05:43.
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