PA28 ditched off Guernsey
My comment with regards to cancer was slightly tongue in cheek as you gathered but it does raise another useful illustrative point. In fact the current risk of dieing from cancer during your life time if you are a male is 1:4 - slightly better odds for a female. The life time risk is therefore high. We spend very little of our lifetime flying a single over the water and certainly not a life time. So is the average GA pilot more likely to die of cancer or from ditching - without doubt far more likely to die of cancer. If he spent his lifetime flying over water, you would arrive at a different conclusion.
I remember a similar argument a while ago on a different forum, where some petrolheads were complaining that 3000 road deaths a year were nothing in comparison with 30,000 deaths per year due to pneumonia, and therefore restricting their right to drive like morons was a disproportionate infringement of their civil liberties. However, the truth of the matter is that the 'typical' patient who dies of pneumonia is probably an elderly person who has already had a stroke and who swallows their food the wrong way, or who has had a fall and broken some ribs and can't cough to clear their lungs. They tend to be very frail, and even if you hit them with strong antibiotics and get them over their pneumonia, they tend to die of something else (another stroke, a pulmonary embolism) a few weeks or months down the line. I'm not arguing for a moment that older people aren't valuable, or that they don't deserve good care. Simply that we will all get to a point where our time has come, and at which medical treatment becomes at best a losing battle.
People tend to get cancer a little younger and whilst they're still relatively fit, but it's still, by and large, a disease that strikes people when they're older:
Cancer mortality by age - UK statistics : Cancer Research UK
In contrast, when relatively young people meet violent and unexpected deaths through transport accidents, the loss is, if not far greater, then at least far less inevitable. We all know that we're going to die but we hope that it will be at a good age, after we've gotten to know our grandkids - who will remember us fondly. We don't like to imagine ourselves being scraped off the ground, with the police trying to match limbs to torsos and our dependants wrangling with insurance companies whilst trying to grieve. All deaths are not the same.
But perhaps more to the point, non-smokers don't have a huge degree of control over how likely they are to get cancer - there are a few very specific types of cancer such as cervical cancer that it's worth screening for - for most types it's a bad idea. A healthy diet is a good idea, and so is going to see your doctor for unexplained weight loss, blood in your stool, or worrying moles.
Again, I'm not arguing that old people are worthless. But as an individual, and assuming that you enjoy life, would you rather die at 40 or 80? Unless your answer is that you wouldn't mind either way, it makes sense to concentrate on avoiding the most immediate causes of death.
Another way of looking at it would be to think about how much different diseases shorten your life on average. A disease that kills an 85 year old probably didn't shave more than a few months or years off their life; if you plow an aircraft into the ground or sea aged 40, you might cut your life expectancy by 45 -50 years.
About 1-2% of us will die in aircraft accidents. Excepting medical emergencies, private pilots who die through accidents will almost always be fit (otherwise they wouldn't be flying) and will have a lot to look forward to in life. And whilst fate can throw anybody a curve-ball, I like to think that I have a reasonably high degree of control over whether or not I die in an aircraft accident - which is not the case for cancer.
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That's a very good post.
I would however add that a lot of cancer screening is actively discouraged by the NHS not because it doesn't work but because either (a) the cost-benefit argument does not meet NHS criteria for what a life is worth in their books (ex: the cost of £1000-a-time MRIs or biopsies for prostate cancer), or (b) there is no effective treatment anyway.
As regards ditching, my own take on it is that if you are not out of the cockpit, standing on the wing, with the life raft pack outside the cockpit and the activation cord in your hand, before the plane sinks, then you have messed up. That is what one must focus on achieving immediately upon ditching, plus grabbing the ELT (I have 2) and the emergency bag on the way out. I brief passengers accordingly, and twice.
Some people might think the raft is self inflating, or that it is OK to jump in and swim after it and climb in, etc.
I read somewhere that 15% of people die accidentally, so if 1-2% of pilots die in aircraft accidents, what does that tell us? It probably tells us that we spend far too little time flying
I would however add that a lot of cancer screening is actively discouraged by the NHS not because it doesn't work but because either (a) the cost-benefit argument does not meet NHS criteria for what a life is worth in their books (ex: the cost of £1000-a-time MRIs or biopsies for prostate cancer), or (b) there is no effective treatment anyway.
As regards ditching, my own take on it is that if you are not out of the cockpit, standing on the wing, with the life raft pack outside the cockpit and the activation cord in your hand, before the plane sinks, then you have messed up. That is what one must focus on achieving immediately upon ditching, plus grabbing the ELT (I have 2) and the emergency bag on the way out. I brief passengers accordingly, and twice.
Some people might think the raft is self inflating, or that it is OK to jump in and swim after it and climb in, etc.
I read somewhere that 15% of people die accidentally, so if 1-2% of pilots die in aircraft accidents, what does that tell us? It probably tells us that we spend far too little time flying
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ABGB, my brain is too small and I've become distracted by the whole age argument; is the point that you are making, related to the age (79 years old) of the pilot who ditched their aircraft off Guernsey due to an electrical failure?
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if 1-2% of pilots die in aircraft accidents, what does that tell us?
One or two per cent of pilots die in aircraft accidents?
How many licenced active pilots in the UK? (genuine question) 20,000?
pure speculation. So 200 to 400 pilots get killed every year? I think not.
What about all this talk one hears of one fatality per hundred thousand hours etc? Did all these dead pilots have that many hours before they perished?
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FBM,
It is not that 1-2% die EACH year. It is 1-2% die over time. So if you have 20,000 active pilots and they each fly for 10 years on average, then 20 to 40 will die per year. All of those numbers seem broadly consistent with the UK experience. The quoted percentage is certainly not out by an order of magnitude.
It is not that 1-2% die EACH year. It is 1-2% die over time. So if you have 20,000 active pilots and they each fly for 10 years on average, then 20 to 40 will die per year. All of those numbers seem broadly consistent with the UK experience. The quoted percentage is certainly not out by an order of magnitude.
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Statistics... A flexible friend.
Perhaps I am unlucky, but in my non-military and non-testing experience, considering friends or acquaintances (let's say, people I knew and who knew me well enough to stop and say hello): seven fatalities in twenty years. In most military flying and most testing, the numbers are higher, but the degree of self-selection is greater too. I'd rather not think on that for too long, especially in civil testing.
mm flynn's numbers are within an order of magnitude, I reckon. Comfortably.
Perhaps I am unlucky, but in my non-military and non-testing experience, considering friends or acquaintances (let's say, people I knew and who knew me well enough to stop and say hello): seven fatalities in twenty years. In most military flying and most testing, the numbers are higher, but the degree of self-selection is greater too. I'd rather not think on that for too long, especially in civil testing.
mm flynn's numbers are within an order of magnitude, I reckon. Comfortably.
I read somewhere that 15% of people die accidentally, so if 1-2% of pilots die in aircraft accidents, what does that tell us? It probably tells us that we spend far too little time flying 
Though there's a flaw there, too. If your average pilot lives 700,000 hours, and is flying for 7000 of them (known overguesstimate), we would expect only 0.15% of pilots to die flying, if it were as safe as life is on average.
To answer a few points:
No, I certainly wasn't alluding to the age of the pilot in question. I was making a more general point that aviation is dangerous, and it's worthwhile taking safety seriously. It always seems slightly unseemly when somebody dies - to be simultaneously aware that a person has lost their life, and to try and learn what one can from it. But I think we should.
I should have been a bit more careful about defining 'work' - you can argue that a screening test that finds untreatable cancers 'works', but the NHS would generally argue that such a test wouldn't be worthwhile.
Another issue is that there isn't just a financial cost of screening tests - many of them find a proportion of false positives, and there are risks to the cascade of further investigations and operations that they spark off. For example, a colonoscopy (for suspected bowel cancer) is a pretty safe procedure, but if you were to do one on everybody in the UK you would kill a few thousand people by causing bowel perforations. If you just pick on people with a family history of bowel cancer, or other 'risk factors', then the equation works out strongly in favour of screening again.
Going back to the topic, if we can have ballistic parachutes, why not flotation devices on the outside of aircraft?
No, I certainly wasn't alluding to the age of the pilot in question. I was making a more general point that aviation is dangerous, and it's worthwhile taking safety seriously. It always seems slightly unseemly when somebody dies - to be simultaneously aware that a person has lost their life, and to try and learn what one can from it. But I think we should.
I should have been a bit more careful about defining 'work' - you can argue that a screening test that finds untreatable cancers 'works', but the NHS would generally argue that such a test wouldn't be worthwhile.
Another issue is that there isn't just a financial cost of screening tests - many of them find a proportion of false positives, and there are risks to the cascade of further investigations and operations that they spark off. For example, a colonoscopy (for suspected bowel cancer) is a pretty safe procedure, but if you were to do one on everybody in the UK you would kill a few thousand people by causing bowel perforations. If you just pick on people with a family history of bowel cancer, or other 'risk factors', then the equation works out strongly in favour of screening again.
Going back to the topic, if we can have ballistic parachutes, why not flotation devices on the outside of aircraft?
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Trying to look on the bright side for a moment and through the tragedy of it all.
This guy died while doing something he loved at a great age - apparently he didn't get his license until he was 76! He certainly lived life to the full and will be remembered in my mind as a positive role model.
What are the odds of any of us dying in our old age doing something we enjoy and not in some care home sitting in our own pi55?
This guy died while doing something he loved at a great age - apparently he didn't get his license until he was 76! He certainly lived life to the full and will be remembered in my mind as a positive role model.
What are the odds of any of us dying in our old age doing something we enjoy and not in some care home sitting in our own pi55?
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Though there's a flaw there, too. If your average pilot lives 700,000 hours, and is flying for 7000 of them (known overguesstimate), we would expect only 0.15% of pilots to die flying, if it were as safe as life is on average.
It's a bit like making money. If you never did anything interesting, kept your trousers zipped up (or followed some equivalent procedure
), and invested every penny in financial instruments, you would die with a few million in the bank.
What are the odds of any of us dying in our old age doing something we enjoy and not in some care home sitting in our own pi55?
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As most aircraft are more or less hollow inside the fuselage. Why not emergency flotation devices inside? An airbag run down the centre which can be inflated on contact with the water? I know it wont help the aircraft float level, but being visible for much longer will aid in being spotted and also act as a flotation device.
Just a thought
Just a thought
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The biggest worry of such a system would be accidental deployment. You might as well just have two life rafts, one for you and one for the aircraft!! Imagine the problems with control should the emergency flotation device inflate accidently inside the aircraft....
Personally I would rather just get away from the aircraft, into the raft as quickly as I could, in the simplest way possible.
A PLB, flares and fluorescein all add to your visibility in the water.
Personally I would rather just get away from the aircraft, into the raft as quickly as I could, in the simplest way possible.
A PLB, flares and fluorescein all add to your visibility in the water.
and an easy way to make money.
~~~
I am always pleased to hear about older people doing things like flying, and this chap's forced landing was good enough for his wife to survive it.
~~~
I see the point about accidental deployment being an issue, but you could make the same argument against ballistic recovery systems. Actually, could you combine the two?
I guess the real argument is that you would have to take all that weight with you even when flying over Arizona, whereas with a life-raft you only need to take it when you need it.
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You could always buy a pressurised plane, and make sure you do a really really smooth ditching so the hull doesn't come apart
I cannot see it sinking, so long as the outflow valves are shut (no idea if that is possible).
One can pick up an old PA46 for not much these days.
I cannot see it sinking, so long as the outflow valves are shut (no idea if that is possible).
One can pick up an old PA46 for not much these days.
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A PLB, flares and fluorescein all add to your visibility in the water.
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I cannot see it sinking, so long as the outflow valves are shut (no idea if that is possible).
(He may even have had a stewardess lined up for the liferaft...)
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The A320 has a guarded "Ditching" push-button that makes the outflow valves close, but on Sully's plane they didn't have enough time to get to that item of the emergency check-list.
It wouldn't have made much difference though, as the rear bulkhead cracked under the pressure of the splashdown.
It wouldn't have made much difference though, as the rear bulkhead cracked under the pressure of the splashdown.
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It wouldn't have made much difference though, as the rear bulkhead cracked under the pressure of the splashdown.
It always makes me smile when I'm reading through the seatpocket safety card, and see pictures of the plane after ditching, where everybody calmly takes of the high-heels and steps into the slide doubling as a liferaft. The waves drawn on these cards are no more than 10cm high. In the North Atlantic? Are you kidding?
