Folks, this is the BS that we're up against.....a logical sounding article to most non aviators.....but leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to telling a complete story.

Utter BS in large, but it's out there: http://usat.ly/1ielZQ5

MTV

Couldn't make myself read that garbage... All the big liberal newspapers are grabbing at straws trying to increase newspaper sales and drive traffic to their site even though as a whole they are dying. Makes me sick especially when the crap they write is false or stretching the truth.

Automobile deaths in the last five decades: 2,555,863 Source = Wikipedia

"Nearly 45,000 people have been killed over the past five decades in private planes and helicopters" source - this article

Appears like they saturated the front pages!! Sensationalism sells but it was also somewhat thought provoking. Don't know much about Robinson Helicopters but the articles made some interesting claims. Anyone know the facts?

I spite of and regardless, this was not what I wanted my nervous wife reading on the day I bought an airplane!!

Mike,
Sounds like you have the same opinion and worries as I do. I read this crap and it really does bother me in the way that these 'author' can write articles that are half truths. There are somedays I actually get upset to the point it nearly ruins my day. So, when that happens I go flying to clear my mind. Just landed and it was a beautiful MN evening. Saw lots of deer and even had a fair sized snapping turtle crossing my runway after I landed.

Unfortunately, it's like most mysterious topics, be it cancer, computer security, global warming, the female orgasm, whatever: Uncertainty and fear sell. Flying and aircraft have always been a source of fear for the layman, but wow-- this one really goes for some meat. For the reporter, it's on to the next mysterious thing that might cause the grocery store queue audience to raise an eyebrow. As for "liberal," I'm not sure politics weigh into it nearly as much as views/reads. Good luck getting USA Today or any mainstream rag to print something positive about anything. It's just not what sells.

I can't speak for the whole article but the facts on the Robinson helicopters and Cessna seat rails are correct.

Why would Cessna give a way free inertia real seat stops if there was not a problem? My seat rails pass inspection according to the AD but I have had the seat slide back. Luckily I have two types of seat stops.

Robinson helicopters have had problems from the very beginning. It's the best selling helicopter in the world, but likely the worst safety record. Early problems with rotor mast separation and chopping the tail boom off were addressed with special FAR's pertaining to pilot technique. There are things you can not do with the Robinson rotor system that you can with other helicopters. Low G and mast bumping are much more critical than in a jet ranger or other under slung helicopter. With proper training, forced by the FAA, the accident rate improved. But many people died prior to the FAR.

The fuel tanks in the Robinson helicopters were made of thin sheet aluminum and are the exterior skin of the upper fuselage. I have had first had experience with a drive shaft failure that ripped through both fuel tanks. The passenger compartment flooded with Avgas. I'm talking gallons under the front seats. Luckily it did not ignite. I was also lucky I was called to take a random drug test just prior to the flight and was not flying that flight. It was very early in my career and I don't think I could have pulled off the autorotation without a turning tail rotor.

There have been lots of post crash fires with Robinson helicopters, LOTS! As noted on the article Robinson's first response to the problem was nomex. They are now making the helicopters with bladders in the tanks. The old ones need to retrofitted or more people will burn.

Robinson has had problems with their rotor blades as well. I had a blade that started to delaminate and blister on the bottom of the blade. The designer of the helicopter Frank Robinson himself said it was from us pulling down on the blade. The aircraft had less than 200 hours and no one had miss treated the blades. A few years later many more blade delamination problems began to show them selfs.

That being said I have over a thousand hours in Robinson helicopters. I think they are safe if flown very conservatively.

Flying is inherently dangerous. Pull up the NTSB reports, as the article states there are on average 3 a day. It's more dangerous than driving a car. Lots of pilots like to say driving to the airport is the most dangerous part. That's true if you are getting on a commercial airline. I have know many people who have died in aircraft accidents and very few who have died in car accidents. I knew several of the pilots from some of the accidents listed in the article.

I love flying! I do it for work and I do it for fun! But it must be done with great respect and care, or I too will be a statistic in an accident report.

Zzz wrote:Unfortunately, it's like most mysterious topics, be it cancer, computer security, global warming, the female orgasm, whatever: Uncertainty and fear sell.

Well, I may not always be certain of the female orgasm but I sure as hell ain't afraid of em'!

Waterboy wrote:I can't speak for the whole article but the facts on the Robinson helicopters and Cessna seat rails are correct.

Why would Cessna give a way free inertia real seat stops if there was not a problem? My seat rails pass inspection according to the AD but I have had the seat slide back. Luckily I have two types of seat stops.

Robinson helicopters have had problems from the very beginning. It's the best selling helicopter in the world, but likely the worst safety record. Early problems with rotor mast separation and chopping the tail boom off were addressed with special FAR's pertaining to pilot technique. There are things you can not do with the Robinson rotor system that you can with other helicopters. Low G and mast bumping are much more critical than in a jet ranger or other under slung helicopter. With proper training, forced by the FAA, the accident rate improved. But many people died prior to the FAR.

The fuel tanks in the Robinson helicopters were made of thin sheet aluminum and are the exterior skin of the upper fuselage. I have had first had experience with a drive shaft failure that ripped through both fuel tanks. The passenger compartment flooded with Avgas. I'm talking gallons under the front seats. Luckily it did not ignite. I was also lucky I was called to take a random drug test just prior to the flight and was not flying that flight. It was very early in my career and I don't think I could have pulled off the autorotation without a turning tail rotor.

There have been lots of post crash fires with Robinson helicopters, LOTS! As noted on the article Robinson's first response to the problem was nomex. They are now making the helicopters with bladders in the tanks. The old ones need to retrofitted or more people will burn.

Robinson has had problems with their rotor blades as well. I had a blade that started to delaminate and blister on the bottom of the blade. The designer of the helicopter Frank Robinson himself said it was from us pulling down on the blade. The aircraft had less than 200 hours and no one had miss treated the blades. A few years later many more blade delamination problems began to show them selfs.

That being said I have over a thousand hours in Robinson helicopters. I think they are safe if flown very conservatively.

Flying is inherently dangerous. Pull up the NTSB reports, as the article states there are on average 3 a day. It's more dangerous than driving a car. Lots of pilots like to say driving to the airport is the most dangerous part. That's true if you are getting on a commercial airline. I have know many people who have died in aircraft accidents and very few who have died in car accidents. I knew several of the pilots from some of the accidents listed in the article.

I love flying! I do it for work and I do it for fun! But it must be done with great respect and care, or I too will be a statistic in an accident report.

Thanks for your perspective on this. The Robinson issues seem to be recognized but unspoken of, as does the inherent danger of flying. I think the Kings are stirring up the establishment a bit with their focus on the myth of the safety of GA. Stats don't lie....at least that much they don't.

Here's the lesson that I take from news coverage like this: if they do this poorly covering topics that I am well-informed about, why on earth would I ever consult their coverage on topics that I'm not well informed about?

Of course this same article is now being broadcast on CBS This Morning. It is on the boob tube right now.

Let's hope the same writer doesn't find out and write about next the current "epidemic of home built experimental airplanes landing where there are NO airports"

Anyone remember the 20/20 TV show on ultralights back in the '80's? A similar hatchet job. What really gets me about this is it assumes all pilots are hapless and helpless idiots, with no personal stake in making their own decisions as to what is airworthy or not. Robinson didn't hide those fuel tanks, it was no secret where they were installed and how, if a pilot chose to fly it after checking out the tanks he should be prepared to deal with the consequences. No one held a gun to their head making them fly them.

Maybe they should write an article about the low impact crashes that have had fatalities due to poor SAR...
Overall I'd say this article is BS.

The only thing I really have against the article is that it gives accurate numbers on airplane deaths in a couple of paragraphs, and then spends the entire article focusing on the most dramatic 10% of the problem (mechanical issues). Bolts, tail rotors, fuel tanks, exhaust stacks, carbs...

Every time I turn the key to start,I know that 90% of my safety is governed by my judgment as a responsible pilot. Keeping good fuel in the tanks and not succumbing to CFIT will nearly eliminate 90% of my contribution to inevitable statistics.

The modern non-flying public does not understand that not everything can be regulated, engineered, and tested to the same standards that a four million vehicle per year industry can meet. And aircraft simply cannot support the addition of 30% more mass for the same mission over the past 2 1/2 decades to meet evolving expectations on crash safety. If we had today's technology running in the same fleet of cars from 30 years ago, we would have seen a 60% increase in the automotive fleet efficiency across the board...but we only have a 15% improvement.

Let's face it- airplanes are pretty close to death traps when they unexpectedly meet the ground. The only way physically possible to make that not so has yet to be invented...the engineering pressure of light weight vs form factors, structural integrity, very low volume production, and to some degree regulation against innovation have conspired to give us what we have today.

In the mean time, the best use of effort is to prevent accidents from happening in the first place. That means training pilots to be as comfortable on instruments and evaluating flying conditions for staying alive as they are in VFR conditions. It means knowing to a certainty how much fuel they have and how to take control of a low fuel situation when it does happen rather than let it control you.

The engineering failures outlined in the article are a bit lamentable...but GA is a low data field. It is hard to issue a recall on incidents that number in the single digits. And amortizing test and development for low production volumes is impossible. Adding mass renders an airframe useless.

Focusing on fixing seat rails, carbs, fuel tanks, engine bolts, and the rest will have more people dead at the end of the year than focusing on CFIT and fuel issues. The only way that focusing on mechanical issues will save more lives is to price GA into extinction.

Flavor of the week. This too shall pass. Way too many words for 99% of the literate public to read to the end. If the author wanted to make an impact with his news piece, he should have wrapped it up much, much sooner.

Lesuther articulated it much better than I could. I've never expected the machine to feature enough engineered safety to relieve me of my responsibility to be the pilot. That role means so much more than the general non-flying public can comprehend, which is why there will never be mass adoption of flight as a means of travel.

The author of this particular article insulted my intelligence immediately by trying to sucker punch my emotions with the story and photo of the burned girl, painting these aircraft as enemy number one and trying to discredit pilot error as the underlying factor for the majority of accidents. The target audience WILL respond to that kind of leading; the same audience that believes a cursory medical exam is a magical bullet for safety. It's an argument for everything that I deplore about an entitled consumerist society who can't accept responsibility for their competence or lack thereof and will relinquish it to regulators and manufacturers. It's also a reminder that we're between a rock and a hard place: Engineered safety through innovation made very difficult by the very regulatory body that's meant to provide it.

keep in mind that there fewer pilot's than driver's. so by the numbers, yes flying is more dangerous. but the number of crash's for GA is less than for driver's.

Well there it was this morning, front page in the hotel lobby.

After rereading the article in its printed form I'm left with mixed feelings. The facts I think are true but represented in such a way to imply all small aircraft are death traps. The picture of the burnt little girl was way over the top. Sensationalism news to wow and provoke fear. The same article could be written about cars.

I hope you guys did not take me the wrong way. I jumped right in on the helicopter stuff because that is what I know best. The article is unusable for the general public except to provoke fear. The mechanical defects they list have all been addressed.

Let's all fly safe

I think Airworthiness Directives adequately cover our mechanical safety issues. Autos have no similar system, yet endanger so many more. Almost any large bureaucracy will miss the flexibility of mind problems like the twenty minute average cycle time of Hawaii airline jets. Yet, an AD fixed that to the extent that I had to record cycles on my NG Huey. At least the Army said we were going to continue recording hours as well. Aviation has shown more safety consideration than the auto industry.

The part I took the most exception to, was the assertion that aircraft manufacturers are covering up the problems to avoid expensive recalls. As any aircraft owner learns very quickly, aircraft manufacturers never issue recalls, never fix problems on their own dime. They issue an AD and make their customers pay to fix their problems.