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How Do GA Aircraft Crashes Impact You

Most accident reports are worthless unless you look at trends or on pilot/mission/type aggregates, at single level they explain accident but they don’t predict them, you can have same aircraft and conditions, one will be fatal and one is not !

I think the article points to something interesting at the end, one has to invest in training, planing and maintenance, the rest is mostly noise and has to be accepted as it is…roughly: 5 in 100kh you will bend it and 1 in 100kh you will die, you may control that by a factor of 0.1 to 10 depending on aircraft, skill, conditions and luck

As long as you fly regularly, use long runways, lot of fuel and use all altitude above things will be fine

gallois wrote:

I would be using alternate air long before it got to minus 16.

Even when going from inside clouds in positive temps to outside clouds in negative temps you have to use alternate air in JetA DA40/42, the air filter is highly dense (as dirt cloggs injectors and fiddles with FADEC), when it gets wet and cold it will stop, I think in some Avgas burners suffer from frozen fuel issues as well (even twins), this is unlikely in JetA Diamonds, the fuel & glows are always pre-heated but the air intake is likely to get stuck and under alternate air may result in funky run if air is unfiltered

Last Edited by Ibra at 21 Oct 10:19
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

In the DA42 and DA40, in cloud, I would be using alternate air long before it got to minus 16.

Anything below +4 and visible moist is alternate air on.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

In the DA42 and DA40, in cloud, I would be using alternate air long before it got to minus 16.
It would also depend on the fuel I was using.

France

I agree with that article. I’ve read hundreds of accident reports and have not yet seen one where I thought that I might have made that mistake. The nearest I got to crashing was in 2004 when – flying VFR in IMC – I was using the “Swiss ICAO” charts with a mix of feet and metre elevations. The aircraft itself is also an issue, with a fairly assured engine stoppage at -15C in IMC and the TB20 is not the only one (DA42 will do it too); you have to use alternate air.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Airlines and AOC operations have annual CRM courses, which in effect are to a certain extent drawn from relevant accident case studies. There probably is a case for a library of well curated GA accident case studies, not the sort of ambulance chasing, speculative you tube efforts (although some are quite sober and well put together). I tend to compile a list of accidents for the type I am flying to see if there is a special trend.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

It is a very valid question indeed.

Some of us like to discuss accidents coldly with a practical learning purpose, but for those not sharing that view, the resulting perception is that accidents play a much bigger role in GA than they actually do.

Yes there are risks at play but when compared to, for example, motoring, most of them are in the pilot’s -hands-brain, so we have more effective tools to tame the risks.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Paul Bertorelli at AvWeb asking if the accident reporting (in aviation news outlets) is doing anything good

https://www.avweb.com/insider/is-accident-reporting-making-us-all-crazy/

EHLE, Netherlands

I used to read accident reports when learning and recently qualified, but gave up a long time ago. I didn’t find any real lessons other than generic ones I should already have known, and many are just sad.

The FFA info-pilote magazine has a monthly safety article where the author analyses the key points of several incidents with a common theme and tries to draw conclusions, which I find more informative than the raw data. He made me laugh a few years ago, writing something like “there were 5 gear up landings in France last year despite me writing articles about it in 1991, 1996, 2007 and 2012”. It did make me go away and think seriously about the occasions when you would elect to land with the landing gear retracted.

Debate on EuroGA is better for me because it offers more ideas, and solutions as well as causes.

Pilot_DAR’s what would you do now if… is a very good idea.

The closest I’ve been is Jgmusic on the front page of the newspapers in the supermarket, which was very upsetting.

EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

As was aptly stated during the Apollo 1 investigation, many accidents are the result of “failure of imagination”. This is particularly applicable in GA, and even more so, when GA pilots start doing things in airplanes which are out of the norm. Pilots, at various levels of experience, fail to imagine what could happen next if the unexpected happens, and sometimes it happens. Pilots who are experienced in the type of flying they’re doing, and ahead of their game, are probably preventing multiple accidents per flight, by accounting for the unexpected.

So many times while flying with another pilot, their flying has exposed to me a weakness in their imagination of what could happen next. Depending upon circumstance, I may say “Do you realize that if X were to happen right now, it would be very high skill and reaction time requirements to escape safely…”. Often, too often, that seems to be news to the pilot.

Generally now, I choose to not watch most GA videos to be found, and particularly the amateur “STOL” demonstrations. It’s a Pandora’s box of “there is not good reason to be taking that risk, do you even realize the danger you’ll be in if it quits there?”.

I failed to closely monitor an experienced pilot whom I was about to send water solo, with my comfort in his skill, and in absolutely perfect flying conditions. The result was both of us in hospital for months, a wrecked plane, and some very shaken family and friends. I know that at least two acquaintances quit PPL flight training because I was in an accident.

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

Silvaire wrote:

I guess that’s my reaction to observing crashes, I already know they can happen and I’m mainly concerned with preventing them happening to me.

That is exactly what I extract out of crash reports. To get sensible for the causes of crashes and mitigate risks. It irritates me if I analyze a crash and cannot find a plausible reason other than stupidity of the pilot. Because I do believe that most of the crashes are not only happening due to shortcomings of the pilot, but something on top.

At least I do not want to become a crash report myself where the summary may read something like “what an idiot has it been”.

Germany
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