I don’t like these cliches about personalities, because if you take a second look – nobody really fits. People are more complex than that (or less :-)). I cannot find myself in that list either.
No, we don’t go through the Lufthansa selection process. But we can learn be aware of risks, we will learn as much about the weather as possible and the more we learn about the topic the better and safer we will become.
Flying safely takes a lot of DISCIPLINE, and that was always a part i liked. I am normally not a very disciplined person – but flying taught me about it and made me a “better person” in that respect. It’s a “second personality” i aquired and which i am able to activate when i fly. It is also a decision about what type of pilot i want to be, and i want to be a safe pilot, most of all.
The foundation is training and knowledge. The more you know about the risks, the more careful you will be. I for one would not do IMC flights at night and over mountains or over cold water. I find that too risky, and i see no necessity to do them. And i don’t care what other pilots do, never. For me that was the most important lesson. I will not do a flight because another pilot thinks it’s safe.
Airborne_Again wrote:
If I lived on an island and 90% of my flight time was over water, I would likely view overwater flights quite differently. (The figures are purely hypothetical – just for the argument.)
Yes, but I also think with time we get more aware or conscious of the risks as well. After flying some decades, fatal accidents aren’t just something you have heard about, but something that has happened to people you know. We also have first hand experienced of one or two incidents that could easily have killed us. At some point we come to realize (as a fact of life) that accidents aren’t something that only happens to “others”, but are cold hard facts and statistics and can happen at any time.
A SEP is a risk no matter how you look at it, because the engine may stop at any time. A passenger (in a SEP) typically see the pilot as the main risk; what happens if the pilot has a stroke or something? A passenger therefore already has accepted the risk involved (what he perceives to be the main risk, right or wrong). Of course, none of this are the main risks, but they are risks we accept or we wouldn’t fly SEP as pilot or passenger.
The main risks are pilot error (CFIT, loss of control, VFR into IMC). These are the risks we have a hard time accepting will happen to us, mainly because “I know better than to fly in such a way that those risks will come into effect”. Here, personality and human behavior come into play. People react differently, and we also react different (and often quite stupid) when we are tired, stressed out due to work, upset because of family and so on compared with our normal behavior. There are lots of things we can do about this; enough sleep, concentrate on the flight, stay in good shape and so on. The main risk assessment is therefore to know when you are not fully able to concentrate on the “here and now” in my opinion.
Of course, nobody fits one personality type perfectly and nobody wants to be put into a box or stereotyped. However, you would be surprised that with some study it is quite easy to even see from the way people dress, shake hands and initially talk to you what their dominant personality type is. Then, ask them a few questions and you know a lot more about their intrinsic motivation and view on life and their take on the risks involved with flying and their attitudes towards authorities and more. :-)
Peter wrote:
Too many people take a look at the sky, see 5 clouds and decide to not go.
Next time, they look at the sky, see 4 clouds and decide to not go.
You can see which way this is going…
As a “weatherman” I can and I agree, even though things are a bit more complex. People are educated about the Intenet sources, they use them and actually many do chicken out regularly just BECAUSE of the wealth of information which they can not interpret properly. People have been “educated” to self brief and to avoid the high costs of talking to a forecaster and often enough are out of their depth and interpret the internet briefing they do get simply way too pessimistic. They look at a cloud map, see everything grey and throw the flight away, or they see a triple X GAFOR not realizing that it doesn’t concern them when they fly high above the Alps VFR and the XXX was generated by low clouds in the very valley the route follows.
It is NOT enough to get access to flugwetter.de or to browse the public charts such as at Wetterzentrale and others. Just the opposite, these charts, if used without the sufficient background knowledge are almost sure to scare people out of flights even 2 weeks before because they give data which are, at the end of the model validity, no more than a wild guess. For the purpose of flight planning, no model is really of any use for more than maybe 2-3 days in advance, for the rest you may well just about read the horoskope instead. It may give you a general trend, say, if you see a stable high over an area which does not budge, then chances are that it really will be there, if you however have to shoehorn a flight between fronts, you will not be able to do so until 1 or two days ahead of time with any degree of accuracy, particularly if you need slots and other stuff.
For VFR, there easily can be too much information which again causes the same thing.
VFR means: Adequate visibility and out of clouds. It does not mean CAVOK obligatory. If there is an ice AIRMET for FL80/FL140 and you fly VFR at 5000 ft MSL, that ice AIRMET is of no concern of yours, yet people will often just check whether there is any airmet, met warning or something like that, and decide to run for cover. Similar things are about METARS and TAFS. I often encounter people who have NOT understood what cloud observations in METARS really mean. BKN020 at a 1400 ft AMSL airport means a cloudbase of around 3400 ft AMSL, not 600 ft AAL, as many VFR pilots think. BKN050 in Samedan means a cloud base of 10’600 ft AMSL, more than plenty to fly over the passes. Yet not long ago someone asked me how it was possible to fly to Samedan on a day like that, if Samedan was at 5600 ft and the clouds at 5000 ft….
Add to that Gramets, other kind of cross sections, extremely useful things but which need KNOWLEDGE and TRAINING in how to use them.
And then add to that, people who have cancelled flights in vain due to wrong understanding and lack of knowledge and then get angry, f..k it all and go flying in real bad conditions and get themselfs killed.
In short, I agree with you Peter. A lot of people simply have not got the means to do a proper risk assessment when it comes to weather. And the same goes for a lot of other things too.
Assessing risks is, if you want to do it seriously, a science. For the non educated folk, risk assessment most of the time does nothing to migate risk, it can even make it worse. If people are bombarded with warnings, cautions and naggings all over the place, they either fall into depression and stop doing things altogether, or they simply ignore them. Not long ago, one of our leading medical doctors slammed the WHO’s practice of throwing CYA warnings out at any occasion, stating that it was counterproductive. People CAN not protect themselfs to the extent those warnings suggest they should. And with bird flu, asian flu, spanish flu, AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, global warming and all the stuff which gets hammered into folks on a daily basis, they are overwhelmed with all the implied dangers and at some point simply stop listening. Hence the fact that AIDS infections are on the rise again for the first time in decades.
In aviation, it is just the same. People who learn to fly do so with a certain amount of enthusiasm, otherwise they would not spend money on it. But they will find out rather quickly that there ARE risks involved and some of those will be adequately taught, others hugely excagarated, particularly in aviation fora and some publications, which will get some people to the conclusion that flying is simply too dangerous to further think about. I’ve had this discussion elsewhere, a prospective student asking before he started flight training how he could justify it in front of his anxious family. He never started as the answers he got scared him off. This can also happen to people who do have their licenses and try to figure out what to do with them and then read all the horror stories in the forums and other advisories, which make aviation look much more dangerous than it actually is. Yet, others will react like those who still smoke despite the horror pictures on the package. And that IS a personality thing.
As for flying SEP night or IFR, there is a inherent problem, obviously. Night flying in a SEP means betting your life on your engine, the same thing goes for IFR in a SEP without a ceiling. Not long ago, an Arrow III crashed on final in Ljubljana below the ILS in FG conditions when apparently his engine gave him trouble and he could not reach the airport anymore. It is true, at night, without a CAPS or similar device, a SEP is a potential death trap. For quite a few people this will mean they won’t fly in such conditions and that is a perfectly logical answer. Others will. Othery yet will use their night privileges to finish a flight which concludes 15 minutes after sunset. Or think of TBO and flying with a 2500 hr engine. Some will have no problem with that, based on what they know about it, others will shy away.
In the end, these kind of inherent risks are everyones decision on how to deal with them. While some will go out of their ways not to face those risks, others will and neither would advocate to simply ban the practice, even though some CAA’s think exactly along those lines. But there IS nothing in life which is without risk. So in the end, it is a question of one’s personal confidence level. But nothing can really replace knowledge and experience when it comes to filtering out the relevant stuff from the irrelevant.
I fully have to admit that I have fallen into the trap of excagerating risks myself not only once. It does happen. And sometimes it does mean I have to really sit back and think about certain things to figure out if I want to do them or not. But I reckon as long as you still think about it and come to an educated conclusion, that is much preferrable to those who simply give up.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
given my stall speed of 35 kts, 100 metres is sufficient, at least to avoid personal injuries
Assuming that your airplane is constructed broadly in accordance with FAR 23.561 to protect occupants from serious injury up to 9g longitudinal crash deceleration, the stopping distance is v^2/18g. So for 35 knots or 18 m/s, you need a bit less than two metres. The other 98 metres are nice to have, but theoretically not necessary for survival.
As for the OP’s question, we all assess risk in the same way and should get the same answer (i.e. a risk doesn’t vary according to who is assessing it). What varies is our perception of the reward against which we weigh that risk in order to decide whether to accept and/or mitigate it.
So, for instance, a competitor’s risk of dying in any one year’s IoM TT is about 2%, but for people who live to race the risk/reward calculation is a no-brainier. And then, within that rather select category of homo sapiens, there are some who mitigate the risk by closing the throttle half a second earlier on Sulby straight…
Taking the mundane example of SEP over water, we discussed in another thread a short cut across the North Sea instead of a detour via the straits of Dover. The reward of the sea crossing is to save about one hour flight time. However, if a pilot doesn’t mind flying and even gets a bit bored just looking at cloud tops or waves on the sea, that reward is probably not sufficient for him to take the short cut.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
actually many do chicken out regularly
Many? Really? The only person I know who fairly often cancels trips a week in advance because one of the many weather models forecasts weather noticeably different from “grand beau” is you…
Of course, many who fly for pleasure (me included) change or abandon trip plans on relatively short notice if the destination weather looks crappy, or sometimes because something else more desirable pops up in their diary…
tomjnx wrote:
The only person I know who fairly often cancels trips a week in advance because one of the many weather models forecasts weather noticeably different from “grand beau” is you…
I’ve done that not because of one model but when multiple models said it was unlikely and I had to find alternate means of transport, yes. In the mean time, I don’t do “must” travel with my own plane anymore, because “must” and GA are, in my experience, mutually exclusive. I should also mention that most of these flights I cancelled that early were flights which included an alpine crossing and usually longer trips to BG and back. Also that I have completely stopped even planning as VFR, it is simply unrealistic to plan them with 2 dates to fly which “must” work. But that has few to do with what I referred to above. Most people do have some time available to do their trips, in these instances I do not so I don’t do them at all. Apart, all those flights which I have cancelled so far, would not have been flyable with hindsight. I always check that.
IMHO, flights which HAVE to happen with a large degree of accuracy and be plannable months ahead are either airline or FIKI-Twin IFR material. Of those two I can only afford the airlines.
But I have seen it happen to me several times when I tried to organize fly outs and other group flights without these hazards. People would look at their I-Phone and see a bad prognosis for the following weekend and cancel.
tomjnx wrote:
Of course, many who fly for pleasure (me included) change or abandon trip plans on relatively short notice if the destination weather looks crappy, or sometimes because something else more desirable pops up in their diary…
Of course.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
It is true, at night, without a CAPS or similar device, a SEP is a potential death trapIt surely depends on the airplane, and how fast it is flying. I know two GA pilots who survived CFIT, one with no injury whatsoever. He was in a C150 with full flap; he flew the airplane all the way to impact and he slept in his own bed that night. The other, in a C172, suffered moderate injuries, mainly from frostbite.
Conversely, surrendering control to a parachute at the first sign of trouble strikes me as a game of chance. I’d think twice about such a gamble anywhere near a wind farm, for instance.
I know two GA pilots who survived CFIT, one with no injury whatsoever
That’s amazing. It’s rare to survive a CFIT however.
I know of three cases where they had but none of them were too great:
Maybe several % survive, and only with the terrain sloping “just right”. Obviously if you hit anything square-on at 100kt+ you will get totally splattered.
But I have seen it happen to me several times when I tried to organize fly outs and other group flights without these hazards. People would look at their I-Phone and see a bad prognosis for the following weekend and cancel.
Fly-outs are always tricky. You get this effect i.e. a lot of people find it too daunting. Especially if flying to another country. Then, in the absence of any money being paid over, a lot of people cancel very readily if something more exciting pops up… even €50 would have prevented that (human nature… no money paid = no value attached, plus some people are always scanning for something more exciting than the offer on the table). Then you get more complicated situations where the dates are fixed by some factors but the airline option is too expensive if you wait till EOBT minus 1 day, so one can do make a decision at say EOBT minus 5 days, on the basis of unreliable MSLP charts, which is usually a stupid idea because one should never cancel until the morning of the flight (my recent Sion trip was cancelled at EOBT minus 5 days, for Easyjet to Innsbruck, but in reality it could have been flown). Then you get other factors e.g. getting stuck in some places would be a massive hassle due to crap transport to an airline capable airport, and lots of people understandably cancel readily in that case if the wx looks even slightly suspect.
surrendering control to a parachute at the first sign of trouble strikes me as a game of chance. I’d think twice about such a gamble anywhere near a wind farm, for instance.
I have zero doubt that I would fly or glide the plane all the way down to just above the min chute deploy altitude. Unless a wing or whatever has come off (I know that has happened on ultralights or homebuilts but has any “chuted” SR20/22 ever been objectively unflyable?) anything else is IMHO just daft. Yet, most people seem to pull the chute more or less immediately, as I believe is the recommendation in the various videos (" pull early, pull often ").
Peter wrote:
You get this effect i.e. a lot of people find it too daunting
Well, it was not rocket science or a transatlantik thing. Actually, from Switzerland to Bavaria…. not more than 50 mins flying time. The 2nd one was to Speyer, where 3 out of 11 planes got there. Weatherpro had some raindrops on the forecast for Saturday and Sunday morning, which was enough for these people to run away. Those who did had a great time though and we did have mostly “O” conditions. The rain happened but during the night.
Peter wrote:
Yet, most people seem to pull the chute more or less immediately, as I believe is the recommendation in the various videos (" pull early, pull often ").
Well, pull early pull often is a quite logical thing to advocate when you are the one who sells the (insurance covered) replacement airplanes…
