David,
While I agree in principle, I think the way you put the airshow accident in context is flawed.
You’re comparing absolute numbers. What we need for an accurate risk assessment is relative numbers. If there were as many aircraft doing airshow-like low level maneuvers all the time (i.e. at a similar frequency to cars driving around the country), the death toll due to “airshows” would arguably be much higher.
The risk for people below an airshow at the actual time of a low level aerobatic maneuver carried out in a historic fighter jet is IMHO not as negligible as the comparison of absolute numbers make it out to be. One of the reasons why the death toll is rather low is that airshows do not occur all over the country 24/7. In other words, a minute of actually being exposed to an airshow may in fact be quite a lot more dangerous than a minute of being exposed to road traffic.
Plus the notion that you willingly and more or less consciously accept the risk of a road accident once you become a participant (yeah – step outside your house). Those who died in Shoreham on Saturday did not, however, willingly accept the risk of dying in a fireball from a crashing aircraft, which does give the whole story a different aftertaste.
As I watched Mark Swan this morning on the BBC, I inwardly pleaded – please do not start the interview with The Apology sermon. It of course, being the BBC, he started with the apology note to the masses. He then rolled out the (knee jerk), CAA reaction. It follows a pattern today. The public apology, which attempts to make it all right. Then the wrong decisions.
This was an accident. In due course the cause, or multiple causes, will be found. Until then, nothing should, until facts are known, be done. I have a Display Authorisation, for displaying vintage aircraft. I worked dammed hard to get it. The whole process is robust, professional, and for the most part, pilots are very aware of the consequence if you bust sections of your routine. However, as in every aspect of life, things can, and do, go wrong. We have to mitigate risk as a society, but not to the somewhat draconian extent Europe/UK drives us. I fully understand the tragedy of sitting in your car at a traffic light, and being hit by a plane. Bizarre, but it could easily have been a drunk driver, an out of control bus, a lorry. We cannot legislate that out of our lives, otherwise, we have no life…
Back of the envelope calculation – 6 million airshow attendees annually in the uk. Average distance travelled to and from: 50 miles. 60 years. 6,000,000 × 60 × 50 = 15 billion passenger miles going to and from the airport. There are currently about 4 fatalities per billion passenger kilometres so you might guesstimate that 120 people or so might have died on the way to and from airshows. With regard to the number killed by falling aircraft – the accidents are so rare that it’s hard to judge how likely they are. Perhaps we’ve been lucky and should by rights have expected 3-4 such accidents, but only had 1. Or perhaps we’ve been hugely unlucky and shouldn’t have had an accident like this for another century.
http://www.airshows.co.uk/blogs/editors/ gives a figure of 6 million annual visitors annually. Obviously this will have changed with time, and how far the average person travels is a big unknown (in Sunderland I think a huge proportion go not-particularly-far by Metro). Suffice to say that 1) being hit by an aircraft is probably a reasonably substantial risk of attending an airshow, relative to other risks that we take for granted and 2) Unlikely to be the greatest risk in attending an airshow (if an organiser, I would be equally concerned about mass heatstroke/exposure etc). 3) probably still much safer than many activities such as hillwalking or camping that most people consider ‘safe enough’.
It’s particularly upsetting that the people killed here weren’t actually anything to do with the airshow, but it does seem to me that the CAA do a generally good job of keeping us safe. My impression – possibly wrong – of Eastern Bloc countries is that mass casualties seem much more common in their airshows, so we must be doing something right. Perhaps we could do more, but there is a very real risk of over-reacting.
Patrick, per hour per participant near an air show, yes the jet is more dangerous. But the absolute numbers are what mattered to the typical road user over the past 50+ years. I focussed on the road users because they had made no conscious decision to go near an air show, and I have great sympathy for them and their families. But 4-5 people die daily on British roads. There are better opportunities to reduce road deaths than by changing air show regulations. The death toll has roughly halved over the last 10 years, and that certainly didn’t happen by eliminating statistical outliers.
Patrick wrote:
What we need for an accurate risk assessment is relative numbers. If there were as many aircraft doing airshow-like low level maneuvers all the time (i.e. at a similar frequency to cars driving around the country), the death toll due to “airshows” would arguably be much higher.
You’re wrong. That’s not how the risks are calculated. Actual risk can’t be calculated based on non-existing facts and imaginary numbers.
Emir – there’s no imaginary numbers in the argument except for illustration.
It’s fundamentally wrong to calculate the risk of dying on the ground due to an airshow by basing it on the amount of time people are exposed to road traffic, rather than the amount of time people are exposed to airshows and then (because the risk likelihood will obviously be low because there are few airshows) pointing out triumphantly how save airshows are.
Again, for illustration, let’s look at another example: There’s a couple of guys (mostly Russian and Ukrainian) out there who take great pleasure recently in climbing buildings, cranes etc without securing themselves in any way to hang from the top with one arm and taking a selfie with the other hand. I think we all agree that this is a rather dangerous business. However, few people die during that activity. Why? Because few people do it, few people are exposed to the risk. Now, in this case usually no bystanders will suffer so we can happily just let them carry on. Airshows are different because uninvolved people are put at risk.
It’s fair to argue, like DavidS, to look at fatalities in absolute numbers and mitigate those first with high absolute numbers. But somehow that would mean that any niche activity that carries substantial risk need not to be looked at as long as more people (in absolute numbers) die e.g. in road accidents. I don’t think it’s “either or”. It’s completely different regulatory bodies anyway that look at these things – they’re not mutually exclusive. It’s not the task of the CAA to make roads saver. But it sure is their task to at least ask the question, after an incident like this, if there are measures to improve safety.
Patrick wrote:
Emir – there’s no imaginary numbers in the argument except for illustration.
I simply stated that you’re wrong on how the risk is calculated. In particular case the basis for risk calculation can be actual number of accidents and actual casulties as well as other actual numbers in case that other parameters (participants, routes etc.) remain the same. Your approach would give estimate of risk if the number of aircraft invlolved is dramatically increased.
One thing that baffles me is the grounding of all Hawker Hunters “for the forseeable future”. Is there any evidence at all that there is something specifically wrong with this aircraft type that was the cause? We don’t ground all C152s every time someone prangs one.
It’s a hard one. Those people driving along the road, did not deserve to die. They were caught out by a freak chance. They didn’t agree to take that risk.
But they we all are exposed to risks that we don’t agree to take. Occasionally airliners crash over cities, and people on the ground die. It’s not common, but it happens. Do we restrict airlines to coastal airports?
I do think it’s right and proper following such a significant incident, that thougth is given to seeing if it can be done safer. For example, when it was decided that aircraft coudn’t fly towards the crowd, in case a loss of control would put them into the crowed, that seems to have been a good idea and works well.
Banning militiary aircraft isn’t such a good idea, they are probably the star attraction of airshows.
Having said that, a tempo ban which is later lifted might be the most sensible path forward. It keeps the media happy at present, and when it’s all forgotten about, it’s lifted with some token improvements.
I feel the need to comment on the article in the Times today. I cant recall the name of the pilot who wrote the article but he has a susbstantial number of hours on type and a display authorisation.
It is fair to say the article was damning and highly critical especially of the pilot, but also of the CAA’s mechanism for granting display authorisation.
While I dont know the gentleman concerned I was disappointed that he should be so critical at this stage in the investigation and left wondering whether his claims about the relaxed way in which display authorisations are granted (and which seem contradictory to the above contributions) are justified.
Did anyone else see the article and feel the same?
On other matters I have read the interesting and polarised debate on risk and risk to those not participating in some way in the dislay.
There seem to me to be two points that havent been made. People write about those at the display “knowing” the risk they are taking on. I dont believe that. I suspect if you ask the majority of people going to air displays they would not perceive there was any risk to them personally. I am not suggesting there is not, just pointing out that I think that would be the view of the vast majority of people.
Secondly, I think if you eventually stop fast jets flying and there performing high energy aerobatics crowds would fall dramatically. The fact is whenever I talk to people who go, they go for the jets, the crowds are a quarter the size where the highlight ais an Extra for example. Again, just the way it is. I have done aeros in a few different types of piston aircraft, including the Extras, and it is enormously satisfying, but I even find myself watching their display from the ground and feeling the display in itself dull compared with the fast jets.
