Tongue in cheek, but maybe the next ‘doctor killer’ is Artificial Intelligence.
You may well be right, but I think it will be a pilot killer first.
I would never have said that, but the UK CAA found reason for this
There are many stereotype stories in the helicopter business. I could recount a few myself, just from observing the scene for 17 years. But I don’t really think it is any worse than FW GA in % terms. It is just different – it is probably a lot more expensive to be a rotary poser than to be a FW poser And helis, even cheap ones, have vastly more bird pulling potential than FW which has zero glamour until you are into millions
Helicopters are statistically far more dangerous. Probably lots of fun but if you are looking for stereotypes, look there.
I fly helicopters and would say that I’m reasonably current; I don’t think I fit the stereotype.
If I took more than 4 weeks off helicopter flying I would be very wary of launching in a 15kt wind. Conversely, I would happily take 6 months away from fixed wing and choose to fly in 30G40. You have to stay current on helicopters, hence the annual Type Rating requirements.
Dave_Phillips wrote:
I fly helicopters and would say that I’m reasonably current; I don’t think I fit the stereotype.
Of course not but there are a lot of well off people who like the image of helicopters without the work it takes to stay current. More so as a percentage than fixed wing in my opinion.
Timothy wrote:
I have always read into it another suggestion, that the doctor is rushing to get somewhere important (to save a life) and therefore does not pay full attention to what he is doing.
Interesting take on the idea. I don’t think it is applicable to doctors flying somewhere though (except maybe Royal Flying Doctors in Australia, but afaik they don’t fly by themselves anymore these days).
Dave_Phillips wrote:
I think your ‘professional arrogance’ term has much weight.
In my experience, there are three sorts of people who choose to fly: youngsters/wannabees, retirees and middle-aged professionals. If we stick with the middle age people they almost all follow this stereotype: Successful businessmen, normally in senior management positions or company directors/owners. They don’t ‘do’ failure. They come from a background where they have learnt quickly and need little reinforcement; acceptance that being a pilot takes time, effort and practice is not necessarily instinctive. They are used to throwing money at problems. Alpha MalesHere’s a thought – it would be really interesting to see what percentage of women pilots manage to kill themselves against their male counterparts. Anecdotally, I suspect the men would score quite poorly.
Timothy wrote:
Dave,While I agree, I think that you have missed an important category which is big enough to deserve its own mention. That is the senior techie type, often in IT, but also engineers, scientists, academics.
They, if one is going to generalise, are accurate and careful and apply SOPs rigidly and from memory and are, in my opinion and experience, the safest category of private pilot.
Peter wrote:
So the “doctor killer” or “banker killer” or whatever name one gives it, is a self-fulfilling label – simply because not many others are going to be in a position to crash a plane like that in the first place
So at 110k a year before taxes (which in Germany means you take home maybe half of it at best) you won’t be able to buy a luxurious plane any time soon as long as you have a family, a house, a car as well, all of which require financial upkeep as well.
You can however get yourself into a syndicate around something pretty good. Even a group of 2 has a big impact on costs, and tends to work nicely, where larger groups tend to get problems (another big topic).
huv wrote:
And no, in my experience doctors are not inferior pilots – perhaps rather the opposite, in general.
That is an uplifting observation for me RobertL18C wrote:
Ironically they are likely to end up as Captains, via the low cost airline route, to the better educated, integrated cadets on the national carriers who may take many years to achieve command. A nice inversion of the old officer class culture with the seargeant pilots achieving command earlier.
Is that really so? Interesting. In Germany in particular we have an obsession with academic qualifications and people who have them generally have it easier in almost all walks of life. As many other posters said before, such qualifications do not matter much when piloting an aeroplane. Aerodynamics aren’t going to ask you for your graduation certificate…
dylan_22 wrote:
“Doctor killer”: What Jason wrote. Bonanza, Malibu and Cirrus are the typical “doctor planes”. Too much airplane for too little experience (doctors typically do not only have ore money but many of them also have less time to practice).