But parachutes aren't cost effective. "We can't even get people to wear their seatbelts and take off with their trays in the upright position, who's going to wear a parachute?" I, for one, would. Hopefully, you'd never have to use it, just like insurance. But it sure would be comforting to know that survivors of an explosion could also survive the trip down.
While we're on the the subject of travel safety, let's start paying a little more attention to the weather that we travel in. The risk is not worth the consequences. Stevie Ray went down in heavy fog. Buddy and Ritchie went down in a blinding snowstorm with a pilot who wasn't cleared to fly on instruments. Wellstone was flying in bad weather, and on and on. Let's stay home when the weather sucks, like in the old days.
In the past when someone said, "It's not a fit night out for man or beast," he meant it. Timetables and schedules and appointments have become more important than lives. People just don't think about the fallibility of man and machine and the fragility of life when they have an appointment to keep. We have not conquered the weather.
Our magnificent cities are little pimples on the butt of Mother Nature that she can reach over and sqeeze out of existence at any given time. Homeless people and farmers know about the weather. "I'm going where the weather suits my clothes."
Quit pretending the weather doesn't affect your life. Why fight it? Don't drive in that deluge - stay home and listen to T-Rex and Eddie Cochran records. Don't fly in that blizzard - stay home and listen to Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. And don't fly that chopper in the fog - stay put and listen to some Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Keep some perspective: schedules are important, but not more important than your life. Avoid small planes if you can, make sure they have enough fuel if you can't, and don't go near them when the weather is bad.
Please see here for more on this subject.
![The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd [2-CD SET]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511PK4VJ1XL._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Sporkadelic
We shouldn't forget the classical musicians: William Kapell, Guido Cantelli, Ginette Neveu, Jacques Thibaud, Eduardo Mata.
2 - Jeremy
That's actually why I hate flying - not so much the risk, but the lack of control. That and the fact I hate falling. And the fact that the last time I flew, one of the engines blew up. And the fact that my father used to own a small plane, but he rented out it, and someone crashed it.
3 - anony-mouse
In fairness, many small-plane pilots are small-plane pilots not because their skills are inadequate, but because commercial pilots are not a high-demand job. Especially in this economy.
Challenger was a complex mix of political pressure, arrogance, and a blatant ignoring of sound engineering advice. Yes, it was screwed up, "but"...
And I really do wonder how you're going to use a parchute in a commercial aircraft.
Everything we do in our lives involves SOME degree of risk. A person can either get tied up in knots about what might be lurking behind the next corner, or just shrug, take reasonable precautions where appropriate and simply get on with life. Nobody gets tenure here.
4 - John Layden
Your emotional reaction to flying is understandable. The feeling of lack of control is natural not because it's accurate, but because the environment of flight is not a natural one. As a passenger in a car your are also out of control, but the environment is familiar.
The numbers also fail to support your thesis. Single engine private planes seem to be more dangerous than cars and less than motorcycles. But I have a problem with the the ability to compare the calculations. Indy to Syracuse is 3 hours in my plane, 11 hours by car. The car is safer but the exposure is longer.
About 1/3 of plane crashes involve a fatality - about the same ratio as in cars. Engine failures in a plane rarely result in a fatality because all pilots are trained from their first lesson to handle the situation. The question of relative risk is a hard one.
In the end a really frequent traveler would need to fly one flight per day for 19,000 years to encounter an accident with one fatality. In single engine general aviation aircraft it would be only about 8,000 years.
In the end it's your lack of familiarity with the environment that causes your discomfort, and that is a correctable condition. Blogging on with anecdotes and invented data doesn't help anyone.
John Layden, insturment rated private pilot
5 - J T Drake
Thanks for the neat blog. You articulated quite well some things that have been in the back of my mind for a while.
Might want to add Will Rogers to your list. Not a musician and not exactly a politician, but very much the entertainer and political observer. Note that he died while being piloted by a one-eyed Texas barnstormer, Wiley Post. It happened near Point Barrow, Alaska, and I believe that the weather was bad at the time.
http://www.willrogers.org/wrbio.html
http://www.acepilots.com/post.html
6 - Douglas
A parachute in a commercial jetliner,5 miles up,damaged by an explosion,is not going to do you any good.How do you and a couple of hundred others get out?Who opens the doors?How do you deal with decompression, along with a dozen other obstacles preventing you from using that chute?Useless,worse than useless.Just plain dumb.
7 - Bill Moon
If you engine dies in an airplane, you do not die, your aircraft merely changes from an airplane to a glider. It is still completely controllable, albeit in a modest descent.
A small airplane in this condition can be landed safely in a parking lot. As the size of the airplane increases, its safe gliding speed increases and it requires more room. At least one Boeing 767 has been successfully landed with all engines off after some kind of in-flight fuel problem. (It landed on an abandoned air force base).
I'm not recommending engine-out landings as an exciting new sport -- obviously there is risk -- but engine failure is not certain death by any means.
8 - Dan Hanson
I have to second what John Layden said. Flying in small commuter aircraft is statistically safer than driving a car. Flying a small private aircraft is statistically slightly less safe than driving a car, but safer than driving a motorcycle.
So why the high number of celebrities killed in small aircraft? Part of it is sheer volume. This group of people do a LOT of flying.
But there's another reason as well. Ego and schedules. If small airplanes have one failing, it's that they cannot handle bad weather as well as large jets. They don't typically have the de-icing gear, the Cat-III instruments, and the system redundancy of a large jet. So if you want to fly small airplanes, you had better be prepared to sit on the ground when the weather turns to crap. Of the cross-country flights I've made, I'd guess that 25% of them caused me to sit on the ground somewhere and wait for weather to clear along my route.
But it's hard to tell that to a politician with a giant ego, or a rock star with an ego, a concert date the next night, and a manager screaming at you to get that tin can in the air. So these guys push the weather. And that's the one thing that will kill you quickly in a small plane.
If you look at the list of celebrity plane crashes, that single factor leaps out at you. Bad weather, tight schedules, and bad decision-making. Small airplanes can be incredibly safe, but only if you fly them within their limits. A lot of dead celebrities and politicians found that out the hard way.
But how about we focus on the Celibrities who fly their own planes, do so cautiously and safely, and have done so for years? John Travolta has logged over 4,000 hours in everything from fighter jets to the 747. Dennis Quaid flies himself everywhere. So does Mickey Gilley, Harrison Ford, Cliff Robertson, and many others. Robertson has been flying for many decades, and tools around the country in a Supermarine Spitfire. Safely.
Airplanes aren't dangerous. Bad judgement is.
9 - Richard
To that list add Tom Cruise (Pitts, P51) Kurt Russell (Star Duster) Sidney Pollock (Lear)Whoopy Goldberg (Mooney) Gil Gerrard, Arnold Swartzenegger, and half the pilots at Santa Monica Airport.
Pilot error - usually running out of fuel or flying into IFR - is responsible for 90% of the airplane accidents. Just DONT DO THOSE TWO and even a small plane is safer, mile per mile, than a car.
10 - Raoul Ortega
"Not a fit night out for man nor beast" -- W.C.Fields from the short "The Fatal Glass of Beer", which Fields wrote.
11 - Fred Boness
This last week a Piper hit power lines off the South end of the local airport. Two dead.
12 - Eric Olsen
I might have anticipated the defensive knee jerk from pilots, although Dan exactly makes my point that the main problem is bad weather and lack of attention to safety in small planes.
I'm glad to hear planes can be landed safely without engines, but not as safely as cars can be steered to the side of the road.
I do not doubt the statistics, but that does not change the fact that you have far less control over the situation in a plane than in a car, the margin of error is usually less, and the consequences are worse.
I wasn't serious about the parachutes on commercial airliners - note that came right after "air brakes," or do you think I was serious about that too? I would like to have a parachute on a small plane, though.
I don't know what the hell John is talking about "invented data" and anecdotes. What "invented data"? And anecdotes are life, pal.
I didn't make up any of the casualties, or do you just not want to be reminded of the dangers? Do whatever you need to do to make yourself all jolly about flying, but that won't bring any of these people back.
What amazes me is that congenital pilots feel the need to ridicule everyone else's concerns about flying - in this case I was talking about flying reguarly in a small plane in bad weather in particular, and the hubris that leads humans to think they can always overcome their environment in general.
Hey, that sounds like a pilot.
13 - Larry Elmore
I fail to see how a passenger in a car has any more control over the situation than a passenger in a plane. I think your relative comfort with driving is indeed based on familiarity, not reality.
Also, I seriously doubt pilots have any more hubris than rush-hour commuters do, based on my driving experiences. Driving fast in bad weather is stupid and risky, too, but there's certainly no shortage of it, or of deaths from it.
14 - Dawn
I hate flying. But I have as much faith in commercial airline pilots as I do anyone. I thank them everytime they bring me to my destination safely.
God Bless them for their bravery and skill.
For those pilots whose hubris killed my favorite musicians, FUCK YOU.
15 - James Antley
Great replies by the pilots to this misguided blog. Hey Eric, just because they are trying to set you straight does not mean they are ridiculing the fear of flying. I think many people do not like the total lack of control felt by a passenger (incl. on in the back seat of a car) and pilots do understand this.
However, pilots really get tired of the BS from media people who don't know anything about the business. One reason is that new rule will get made up after an accident that was indeed purely the pilot's fault. I.e., I was pretty worried about the FAA starting a "no VFR (visual flight rules) flying at night" thing after John Kennedy's total screw up. Everybody pays because of one person's mistake - what is this country - a big kindergarten?
Example of the BS from the media. "After the engine failure, amazingly enough, the plane did not fall out of the sky" Well, whadya know?
So, anyway, the Wellstone crash was a typical weather crash - I would bet that the pilot(s) thought that they had broken out of the cloud layer, and wanted to take a short cut. This is called scud-running, and one must be careful to know exactly where he is and what obstacles are in the area, in order to scud-run safely. Just guessing here, and a report from the NTSB will come out after a while. No way both PT-6's would die at the same time. Out of fuel - it's happened before - another possiblilty, but this can be determined easily.
What is that business about jumping from an aircraft up in the flight levels doing 250 knots true? What do you know about skydivng, Eric?
Oh, Mr. Boness opines:
"This last week a Piper hit power lines off the South end of the local airport. Two dead."
I say:
"This last (typical) weekend there were 10,000 car wrecks just in the United States. 125 dead."
16 - James Antley
One more thing: I thought for sure the Skynyrd crash was in a DC-3, but VH-1 could have had the story wrong. After all, what the heck do they know about airplanes, anyway.
17 - Eric Olsen
Whatever: more pilot "we know all there is to know," hissing out "pilot error" as if it were a magical incantation, crap.
I don't know anything about skydiving and don't pretend to; like I said, I'm sure it doesn't apply to commerical airliners.
The point is we put schedules, economics, and convenience over safety, and the result is unnecessary death.
If you fly safely, more power to you, but don't ever get cocky or complacent about flying. Driving is very dangerous in its own right - there is no question about it - but at least you're already on the ground.
18 - GilbertZ
Wasn't Harrison Ford in a crash or two and survived? Something like that...
I saw a show once where a parachute was proposed for the entire passenger section...a big parachute and apparently a BIG eject button for the pilot :)
But it cost too much money, so it was never used...I wonder how many crashes would have had better results with it?
It was designed for a Jumbo..
19 - Kimmon Johnson
I believe the point being missed here is that Eric would rather go out in a spectacular rollover at 70 MPH @ zero altitude than to fall out of the sky from 30,000 feet. To each his own...I understand and I fly frequently.
BTW: the first two motorized vehicles in Houston, Texas also managed to crash into one another in the downtown area in the early 20th century.
20 - KP
> For those pilots whose hubris killed my favorite musicians, FUCK YOU.
Dawn, your sentiment is understandable, but misdirected. It's not the _pilots_ in these cases urging the risk, it's those hiring them. Where the pilots deserve to be faulted is in not saying, "Sorry, the weather says no."
21 - Mark Saleski
when i was younger (teens, twenties) i used to love flying. the accelleration, the g-forces, the view. man, it was great!
then i didn't fly for quite a number of years.
now i just hate it. it doesn't have anything to do with sept. 11th either. it just feels (as others have said) like i have no control in the matter.
a while back, while flying from san diego back to new hampshire, i listened to whatever channel it is where you can hear the chatter between the plane and air traffic control. now that was kinda cool. it was more than a little reassuring (ok, maybe i allowed myself some rationalization) to hear the pilot hold a normal conversation while the plane was bouncing around on our approach into chicago.
22 - Acidman
Eric, shit happens. You can lower the odds of disaster by using common sense, but life offers NO GUARANTEES except death.
Nobody can make anything totally safe. Accept that fact and quit worrying about it.
Ya pays ya money and ya takes ya chances. That's life.
23 - Eric Olsen
Actually, my point is I would rather not go out at all acidentally. My other point is that an alarming number of musicians, entertainers, politicians, and others who fly a lot in small planes have died in accidents. Cars and motorcycles are terribly dangerous too - my final point is whatever means of transportation you choose, be careful, pay attention, minimize risk by taking the weather into account, and DON'T BE A DUMBASS.
Thank you, drive through.
24 - MommaBear
If memory serves MB correctly, the Aaliyah flight was doomed because of her demands to load more on board than was safe.
25 - John Lance
"The flight environment, even more so than the sea, is unforgiving of even the smallest error, no matter how small"
As an instructor pilot in supposedly one of the most dangerous flying jobs in the world, I think I can add a little light to the subject at hand. Is flying more dangerous than driving? Maybe. Personally, I've known more people that were killed in car wrecks than in aircraft mishaps. The reason comes back to decision-making and training. If you fly a decent amount (more than 30 hrs a month) and have over 1,000 hours, you probably have the currency and experience to avoid most flying accidents. The problem is with pilots who don't have currency (dentists and doctors on the weekends) or experience (commuter and small plane pilots). Personally, I feel uncomfortable on civilian airliners not because I'm afraid but because I think I'm a pretty good pilot and I like having the controls in my hands. That part falls under the whole 'illusion of safety' heading. If you have some control of the situation, you tend to feel safer, whether you actually are or not. Finally, yes, having ego-driven VIPs can make normally safe pilots do stupid things. In 1995, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and his entourage crashed into a mountain in Croatia in a USAF CT-43 (Boeing 707). They were a) behind schedule and b) in bad weather conditions. My guess is that Brown was breathing fire over being late and the pilots didn't say 'screw it, we're diverting'. So either fly or don't fly, just remember that human nature is the real limiting factor.
Capt John Lance, USAF
P.S. Oh yeah, almost forgot. I'm currently an IP in the USAF MH-53M special operations helicopter. I've been a pilot since 1993 and have flown pretty much all over the globe (Japan, Korea, Bosnia, Kuwait, Africa, etc...) Have I had a mishap? Yes, but it was a collapsed nose gear caused by a sand-covered cement block during a desert landing. No dramas, we just shut down and let the crew chiefs fix it. Of course, now that I've written this post, I'm knocking on wood and looking for my rabbit foot :)