I had this thought after reflecting on so many accidents. Some by incredible pilots. Legendary pilots.

I can see new, low hour guy effing up. But so many of these crashes are great pilots!

I know we pilots are different than ground bound people. I am amazed how many people want no part of small planes.

I had my lucky to be alive moment. Really really STUPID!!!!!!

I think we have a danger, no fear, I can do that gene. It over rides the way we are when we talk here on the ground.

I could list all the crashes but you already know.

So my question is why do we keep doing the same things over and over again?

CFIT,out of gas, VFR into IMC. Bush planes on there backs, stuck in trees, rivers.

What say you??

Fly safe...Rob

Well Rob, I think that is a good question. I have given some thought to that very issue once or twice over the years and I think it just because we are human.

Search as might, I have not been able to find a cure for that!

I guess we could ask why we text while we drive, or why we follow too closely, or why we speed, or why we eat at McDonalds, or why we are on our third wife, or why we sometimes say stupid things.

I used to think pilots were special, somehow elevated above the common folk. Turns out as pilots we just have access to a different set of things we can do wrong than most people do.

I am hearing a stall horn warning me that I have now used up all my philosophy for 2011.

I couldn't agree more. Famous pilots like Art Scholl, Paul Mantz, Frank Tallman, Howard Hughes... The list goes on. Here's a good one: Mohammed bin Laden, 73, father of Osama bin Laden, was killed in 1967 in a Beech 18 while landing at a rough strip in Usran, Saudi Arabia. Immagine if his son had been on board! I would guess that most pilots have a story or two. I have.


Clambake Joe

So that is what it is like to be human.
Luckily, I am not one of those pilots Rob is referring to. In fact, almost nothing pertains or applies to me and I may also suffer other deficiencies of which I am not aware. Then there are all those other things which ARE actually beyond my control. (Why is there is no tongue in cheek smiley)

For as long as we trade our bag of luck for our bag of experience we run the risk of the first one running out before the second is full. I doubt if there is a way to change that without staying on the ground.

Rob, the reason you ponder this question may be the reason you are still here to ponder it.

"The cockpit is no place for an optimist"

Get a copy of "Fate is the Hunter" by Ernie Gann.

Gann didn't die in an airplane, though he flew MANY of them, in some really tough conditions.

Excellent book.

MTV

As others have said Rob, we are human..take it for what it's worth. We won't live long enough to experience everything..we have to rely on the experience of others to help us make our decisions...hopefully our decisions will perpetuate our existance so we may teach others before they make the same mistakes and are not here to tell their tale.
Recent events that we all know of bears this out..please be careful out there!

Well, I agree with the others when talking about A-B airport flying, and weather and running out of gas and all that stuff but when it comes to hard bush flying I sort of think it is like when I raced dirt bikes and stock cars, one of my mentors always said, "you never know how fast you can go till you go just a bit too fast and crash"
I always get a kick out of people who lay out rules like "if you haven't reached takeoff speed by the halfway point abort the takeoff"
How does that work when your plane requires 400 ft. of ground roll and the strip is 425 ft. Your go.nogo point is when you push in the throttle.
Anyhow if you continually push the envelope hard enough, you WILL eventually exceed what you or your machine can do and bend something. I think maybe the trick is to be sure that you only bend something repairable and with no injuries.

As to how to cure people who try to fly for three hours on 1.5 hrs. of fuel and press on into really shitty weather I don't know, just shoot em first so they don't make air crash stats.

Unfortunately, to error is human. Hopefully when we error, we learn something and live to fly another day.

I don't have much philosophy to offer ... just my signature tagline.

The greatest, or at least the most famous, fighter pilot of all time, Baron Manfred Von Richthofen - aka The Red Baron - was credited with 80 aerial kills in the Great War. When it only takes 5 kills to make an "ace". Think of it - he went up in the air and came back time after time, and won 80 victories in the air. He never lost in battle to another pilot.

... yet, he was killed in April 1918 by a single bullet that some forensic experts believe, due to the trajectory through his body, was fired from the ground ... the greatest ace brought down by a lucky shot by some faceless doughboy or limey or French foot soldier?

What can we do to avoid Fate? We can try not to tempt Fate .... like, don't make stupid decisions, especially a string of stupid decisions .... and we''ll probably live to fly a long time ... until one day, some a-hole drunk driver, or the C-word, or a bum ticker, or a damn Canada goose comes through the windshield ... or whatever.

yup on all that...but u bring up very good points Rob. how come did they bite the dust? one i haven't read here yet, is do these big-hour pros ever get, besides a bfr or etc, a chance to get critiqued while working? i think not. bad habits do form with a lot of flying, and sometimes in a hurry. the back-country is damn un-forgiving, and i believe given a chance, a really good airplane will kill you if it can. "live by the gun, die by the gun". dont believe it? have a local bozo like myself fly u around the frank and let u look at all the birds scattered about. some with good endings, some not. the pilots put themselves there, the birds finish them off should enough mistakes get made...!

it seems also, that as pilots, throwing in the towel and being able to wreck your pride and joy so that u can maybe walk away from a bad situation, is damn hard to do...Jo

An excellent article entitled, “The Psychology of Safety”, by J. Mac McClellan, appeared in the June, 2010 issue of FLYING magazine.

A brief summary:

McClellan is reporting on an innovative study conducted by Avemco Insurance. In the past decades airlines and corporate flight departments have made great progress in reducing the number of accidents. Not so in general aviation. General aviation kills 500 people in an average year.

Over the past few years Avemco has engaged a formal study to understand why airplanes crash and to identify pilots who are at higher risk. It’s clear the FAA’s training and testing standards aren’t doing the job.

What Avemco has learned is that advanced ratings make no noticeable difference in its risk. That is, a person with a commercial or ATP shows up in its loss column at essentially the same rate as PPs do. Recent experience is important, time in type matters, but once you get a few hundred hours then it doesn’t seem to matter.

Bill Rhodes, a specialist in human behavior and a retired professor from the Air Force Academy, is conducting much of the research for Avemco. The study has learned that pilot training, experience and skill are important in preventing the minor, fender-bender type of accident that usually occurs on or near the runway. But in the major accidents it seems that experienced pilots do no better and may even be more likely to crash than a low-time pilot.

The study hasn’t concluded yet, but preliminary evidence is pointing to at least one conclusion: some pilots are out to prove something to themselves or maybe to others. The author continues to say that professional pilots while deadheading a jet have made some boneheaded decisions that they probably would never have done with passengers on board. But the opposite is true of GA pilots. If we have a passenger aboard we might want to impress them ... and what’s the point of buzzing a house if no one is there to admire our flying skills?

It seems clear that the biggest risk in GA is the psychology of pilots. What is it about the attitude and personality of a pilot that makes him or her a higher risk for an accident? Why are some pilots more willing to add more risk to their flying than they should?

It is a great article about the ongoing study.

Anybody else keep a photo of the family in the cockpit? I know one other commercial guy up here who does.

here's a link to the article

http://www.flyingmag.com/safety/left-se ... ogy-safety

Rob,
You're retired fire department. I'm an RN with over 30 years surgical experience. How many times have we scraped someone off the street and said.."what the hell was he/she thinking??" People do dumb s**t.
I've seen a few aircraft accidents that have caused me to ask the same thing. I think it often times can be boiled down to simple human traits. Those of us that love flying may never consider that what makes us the happiest would ever hurt us, so we stretch the limits.
Mark

Rhyppa wrote:here's a link to the article

http://www.flyingmag.com/safety/left-se ... ogy-safety

Thanks for providing the link.