Thank you everyone for the interesting discussion. I’d like to reply to every single post separately but at the moment I’m stuck at my hospital for another 18-hour-shift and only have my smartphone at hand, which makes writing long replies tedious.
Generally I think we’re in agreement that arrogance, overconfidence and wealth make for a dangerous combination for any would be pilots and owners. Medical doctors are probably just used as a stand-in for anyone meeting these critera. Jason rightfully mentioned that the term “doctor killer” is an anachronism from the 50s. Today other jobs make wealth more easily, e.g. certain kinds of bankers, brokers and businesspeople. What I experience first-hand though is that MDs have a hard time to remain current due to the excessive work hours and shift work. I also stand by the claim that us physicians are – on average – less “techy” as Peter would say – than e.g. IT people or engineering types, who are widespread on this forum. Which is just one of many reasons why I’ll try to stick with you and gather as much advice as possible.
Also, as for myself, I am not a “by the book” kind of guy – be it in medicine or elsewhere in life. I understand this may make my life more difficult in aviation…
More to follow when I’m back at home, hope this night stays calm especially since I also have scheduled my second cross country solo for tomorrow. :)
JasonC wrote:
Of course this is true and we all know examples where arrogant wealthy people think they know it all. But I think it is true at all levels of GA.
Jason,
the type of guy I am talking about has been more adequately described a few posts ago: Alpha male, throw money at problems so they go away, don’t take no for an answer and some more.
I would not say that goes through all of GA, particularly where money is concerned.
Most people I deal with finding airplanes for them are looking in the <100k segment. These are people who have learnt to fly the hard way, saving for their next lesson and afterwards saving hard to get the best bang for the few bucks they have. These are not people who do their PPL out of the petty cash and order their first plane new before they even start.
Doing your PPL/IR e.t.c. on a tight budget and then finding a plane you can use in a long process is different than that scenario, a lot different. It allows more time to learn and to get things right, it also will not involve “new” models where few experience is available. in my experience this excludes several factors which have led to the Bonanza and Malibu disasters. With Cirrus, it is the shute which has saved several such people from becoming a statistic but did not prevent others.
Have to add, also the TBM and PC12 have seen such accidents, one of the most balant ones being a Citation X at Egelsbach a few years back, whatnext will recall that one I am sure.
MedEwok wrote:
Medical doctors are probably just used as a stand-in for anyone meeting these critera.
Yea, at the time there were a few accidents by doctors, but the much more high profile ones in the Bonanza were actually involving people like Buddy Holly, Robert Francis and Jim Reeves, all of which were musicians, Jerry Pettis was a congressman. But you are right, it is not quite fair as a term.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Yea, at the time there were a few accidents by doctors, but the much more high profile ones in the Bonanza were actually involving people like Buddy Holly, Robert Francis and Jim Reeves, all of which were musicians, Jerry Pettis was a congressman. But you are right, it is not quite fair as a term.
Correct me if I’m wrong but Buddy Holly wasn’t actually piloting the aircraft, was he? Nor was the Big Bopper or Ritchie Valens…..
Exactly. The “day the the music died” they were flown, and killed, by a young and inexperienced charter pilot. See Wikipedia.
Those were different times for aviation, in terms of capability, equipment, procedures, etc. Today’s charter flying is IFR and that whole scene is very different. I recommend reading Fate is the Hunter for a taste of how it was. The book starts with a long list of dead pilots which the author knew. We had a thread on that here
On top of that, people like Buddy Holly were doing a gig every night or so, moving to the next town afterwards. The pressure (on the pilot) to fly was intense but what he was flying was quite similar to today’s VFR spamcans used for PPL training. It may have been a Bonanza but that is an ordinary basic plane and if you don’t have what we today call IFR equipment (and ground facilities e.g. ILS) then it is just the same. Trying to fly that in all wx and there will be a high accident rate. Some pilots eventually become very clever in judging how to do dodgy flying but no matter how clever the pilot is, if you end up in cloud below 0C you will ice up and eventually crash. And in the days of dead reckoning, CFITs were easily one.
The absolute minimum equipment for a Buddy Holly type of mission profile would be a fully de-iced plane with radar, and preferably pressurised and capable of FL250+ so a piston PA46 is the baseline, which didn’t exist back then. Anything below that and it’s only a matter of time… Today, in the USA where there is a runway in every town, it would be done with a bizjet, otherwise a PC12, King Air, etc will deliver a despatch rate approaching 99%.
MedEwok wrote:
Also, as for myself, I am not a “by the book” kind of guy – be it in medicine or elsewhere in life. I understand this may make my life more difficult in aviation…
Well. I build my aircraft myself, I test fly it myself and I write the books myself, pilot handbook and maintenance manual or reference. The only requirement is living in a country that has a real experimental aircraft regime; Scandinavia, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland and many others.
“By the book” is mostly self inflicted. For commercial operations, there is no other conceivable way of doing it though. For private recreational stuff, which 99.9% of private GA is, “by the book” is mostly a nuisance as far as technical aspects go.
I’m also a doctor, in mechanical engineering. Does it help when flying? I think so, flying comes very easy to me, and I understand all the physical aspects (unless the opposite is proven 
But flying is a “bodily” thing, the best pilots are also brilliant athletes. Likewise I guess the “best” IFR pilots (if there is such a thing as a good IFR pilot), also are good simmers. Does it help building planes. Not so much. It makes it fun. But as the saying goes. It takes 3 years to build an aircraft, if you are an engineer, multiply it by 3 (or something like that).
LeSving wrote:
But flying is a “bodily” thing, the best pilots are also brilliant athletes
Good pilots know how to trim 
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Have to add, also the TBM and PC12 have seen such accidents, one of the most balant ones being a Citation X at Egelsbach a few years back, whatnext will recall that one I am sure.
Yes, I do recall that accident. A Citation X is a different category of aircraft than the typical “doctor killer”. But this accident was of course one of those “know-it-all super successful businessman owner-pilot” who would rather kill himself and everyone on board rather than accept the advice of people who might know a little bit more than himself. He even paid one of those people who knew better than him to fly with him as safety pilot but wouldn’t listen to him when he confirmed the terrain warning which they had just got from their ground proximity warning system (" there can be no terrain here because I say so and I am always right! "). Unfortunately he did not die alone in this accident.
And no, one does not have to be a good athlete to be a good pilot. I have come across a fair number of good pilots in my career, but athletes were not among them.
I am quite surprised by what a high proportion of pilots, and I include myself, are portly.
Yes; the GA (including, or perhaps especially, bizjet) pilot demographic doesn’t have a good lifestyle. So it is just as well that fitness has no part to play IMHO – so long as one is functioning properly.
We’ve had a few threads on “health” and diet and stuff in the past and any suggestion of healthy eating gets slammed. However that only reflects the wider internet; people tend to be very defensive of their chosen diet.
