Several years ago, not long after earning my private pilot certificate, I departed the Burlington/Alamance Regional Airport, North Carolina, where I was based. My intent was to make a circuit around the outside of the Raleigh‑Durham Class C airspace and return to Burlington to land.
Put this blog right up there with your very best…
“Risk reduction comes from remaining active and current”
Nope, I’ve never believed that for an instant.
Lowering risk in one area can actually raise risk in other areas.
The more you fly, the more exposed you are to bird strikes, engine failures, brake locks/leaks, mid-airs, off airport precautionary landings, etc. There are plenty of accidents with an instructor in the right seat.
Think of it in the same way as riding a motorcycle every day in traffic; skill only goes so far when everything out there is still trying to get you.
I took my private check ride a week after JFK Jr spiraled in. I think if a person really wants to be a pilot, accident reporting won’t change anything for those who are truly committed.
The aviation press might take a collective decision to ignore accidents, but you can be sure that what is left of local press will continue to give them space, and if there is a TV crew in the area they will point their cameras at the wreckage.
That is just the tip of the modern iceberg – you pretty much have to be over 50 years old now to watch the TV or read a newspaper.
Out in the Insta, Tik and YT world, driven by algorithms, the crash will be in all its blurry, mobile phone held the wrong way glory – along with every other one ever put up there, ready to jump off the screen into the little brains of users for a long time.
Then they will be offered airline travel discounts…
It seems overlooked that there is a secondary audience for some of this reporting. I used to leave copies of AOPA Pilot laying around until I read them. One day, my wife of that time decided she should know something about aviation since she sat in the right seat. Well, after reading only two or three of the “Never Again” columns, she was firmly convinced that I was endangering everyone involved by flying. She never really changed her view on that. We’re divorced now, and I still feel that we lost out on a lot of good trips (I had an Aerostar) due to a fear she didn’t have before reading a few columns. BTW, I stopped reading “Never Again”, as too many involved what I viewed as rookie mistakes or outright negligence.
I learned to fly before the turn of the century. In my first year as a private pilot I subscribed to the Aviation Safety newsletter, it arrived every month and was pre-punched with holes to place in a three ring binder. Two years later I traded my Aviation Safety subscription for IFR Magazine, another excellent publication. I read them religiously, I learned a great deal from them. In fact, I shared them with my young bride who appreciated the learnings, and developed a set of expectations for me to live and fly by.
One time, on a cross country from Hamilton, OH to Land-Between-The-Lakes, KY she woke up mid flight to find me reading a copy of AOPA Pilot magazine. She admonished me, saying I should be paying closer attention to monitoring my engine instruments, identifying potential landing sites and estimating glide distances from the chart. Because those were things you did to increase your chances of survival from an engine failure.
Learning from accidents is learning from mistakes, and we know if one didn’t make any mistakes, look one cannot expand their body of knowledge. I share the occasional accident report with my students to demonstrate the value of some of the training lessons I provide. I’m happy to say my students consume accident reports on a healthy basis because they realize the value and appreciate the reminder that while flying has its risks, they can be mitigated. You can ask my last Private Pilot student. Two months after passing his checkride he executed sound ADM and landed his airplane with his bride of 40 years onboard, in a soybean field after the engine started to vibrate violently. He did so without a scratch to persons or machine.
Keep the stories coming Paul. You know there’s some pilot out there who is going to be pressured to fly his family home in GA plane during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and might not be successful in 1000 ft ceilings with temps in the mid 30s. But if God forbid, that accident does happen, it might prevent a dozen similar ones from happening in the future.
There is a dichotomy between actual risk and perceived risk. If someone believes they can control the risk, the risk is perceived as less. As a risk becomes more familiar, we perceive the risk as less. One of the riskiest things we can do is drive a car but we perceive the risk as minimal as we are in control. One of the safest places on the planet is a jet airliner with two engines and two ATPs at the controls but perceived risk is exponentially higher because we aren’t in control. A pilot flying a general aviation aircraft perceives the risk less as they are in control. A non pilot perceives general aviation far far more risky than statistics would validate. Generally when risk is made familiar or when a person feels in control, the perceived risk will always be perceived as less than the actual risk. Reporting accidents to pilots the risk becomes familiar, pilots are in control and the perceived risk is minimized. Non-pilots who see aviation accidents just come out of the blue (pun intended) and aren’t in control perceive risk much higher than actual risk.
I can think of no other personal transportation system in which the individual is required to take intense and continual training as with GA. I’m starting to learn to be a CFI and I’m amazed at the breadth and detail that I need to learn to teach.
Maybe if the automotive community was required to take even one-quarter of the training we do, the accident rate on the roads would plummet. For example, we need a sign-off to fly anything over 200 HP while any boob with good credit can buy and drive a 600 HP monster on city streets. And yet, fatal accidents in cars only merit mention on the local news when they snarl up traffic. One poor guy who slides off the runway with a blown tire makes the national news cycle for days. So if the automotive community doesn’t benefit from reporting every little ding and dent, then the flying community shouldn’t be similarly burdened.
I do think this keeps people from flying, whether it’s a personal decision, or spousally-induced. So maybe trying to tone-down the coverage might be good for everybody. I doubt that you’ll convince Lest Holt, though. He needs something to lead with every night. After all, they paid for all that dramatic music…
A valid point, but being practiced and current definitely reduces the chance of compounding the situation if something does happen. Since all bad outcomes are a result of a series of events, being practiced in ADM and confident in your skills will greatly increase the chances of turning a random event (bird strike, locked brake, and so on) into just another learning experience.
Funny - I just posted on our local airport blog that the wintering Canada Geese are back. (I swear they use our windsock as a waypoint to the adjacent fields where they overwinter). That and a note that the deer activity is up. As I posted, I wondered who would read it. For those of us who fly through the winter - it’s not really news. Was I wasting my time?
But if it keys you just a “hair” to deal with them when climbing out - when I usually meet them and play “see and avoid” - was it a good post? Perhaps.
And for the student pilots and the newcomers in the tie downs - it IS news. So maybe it does some good.
Flying is inherently risky and it is obvious that the more we engage in a risky activity, more likely we are to have an incident or accident. I can reduce the probability of having a bad day in aviation to zero (or nearly so) only by not flying at all. This is a “Well duh…” situation.
Paul is absolutely correct here. Although we can never remove the risk from this activity we love, we can mitigate those risks through currency and proficiency. If we choose to fly, the more skill we have in recognizing and properly reacting to situations which require more precise and accurate handling of the controls, the more safe we will be.
My advice to you would be to simply stay home. Me? There is a cross wind forecast this afternoon and I’m going to go out and do my best to land on the center line, aligned, and with no drift. You never know when that might be important… and I definitely need the practice.
I am within a couple of hours away from my check ride. Since I soloed, I have done an off-airport landing due to engine out at 800 feet while practicing ground reference maneuvers. I have arrested a near stall on take-off. Both incidents would have been fatal if my training were not up to par. I am training with an independent CFI but our training aircraft are aging and so is the entire GA fleet. Those who can’t afford modern aircraft are flying dinosaurs. A new Cessna 172 is approaching a half a million dollars. Air frames are not being produced in sufficient volume to automate production. They are essentially hand-built. The engines are still being manufactured with 1940’s technology. Both the training and the entire fleet is 1940’s technology.
If we are going to get ahead of the accident curve, we need to rethink our training process. Why do we practice maneuvers instead of practicing scenarios like the airlines do?
Paul,
Great article, as usual. I used to read the NTSB accident reports for all the airplanes I’d been flying or teaching in. I stopped doing that years ago, quite unconsciously, because I wasn’t getting anything out of them. Now YouTube has new players doing amateur accident analysis, and I’ve admittedly been drawn in occasionally. It’s time to go flying and turn it all off.
Fly safe! Frank
As I sit in the kitchen, next to the field edge, with a traffic light the other side of the hedge - there are at least two fender benders a week at that light - and that is just the morning commute while I have breakfast. About one a month gets more serious and ambulances get involved. NONE make the traditional news - TV, Radio, Print. Though sometimes the local neighborhood “live” blog might mention backed up traffic and a need to seek another route.
As I sit watching the evening “local” news on the east coast - it enrages me to see a “walk away” runway excursion on the west coast touted as “news”. Especially as the plane “plummeted” and the pilot’s survival was a “miracle”. But there is a cash strapped, syndicated TV station picking up on cheap content for ad revenue. Bit like your admitted click bating us with accident stories.
Leading to the airport neighbors - who would have us shut down - start screaming how dangerous flying is. I point out the fender benders at the light by the field and it doesn’t seem the same to them - because the TV said the plane “plummeted” (could be their house).
Now the 6 car pileup and fire with fatalities, on the bridge to the island that closed commerce for a few hours - that is probably news.
–
Which is a long-winded way of saying. Don’t report the “noise” but do report the “exceptions”. Sorry - that means you will need to exercise editorial judgement. But you are pilots - you are good at ADM. Should transfer to journalism! 
As someone (outside the US) who learned to fly in the second half (just) of the 20th Century and who worked as an ATC for 30 years, I have been reading accident reports for a LONG time.
I think it is your job in this venue to winnow the wheat from the chaff. If any of your readers is an ‘ambulance chaser’ and you don’t report it, they will find the reports elsewhere.
Did I mention that I also worked in freelance aviation journalism? To sell a story you write for the specific readership of the magazine you pitch it to; you must know that.
Assuming that, you know your readership. YOU look at the story and decide what the lesson is in the specific accident and decide whether it is of value to your readership and publish or not. It’s that simple - in my opinion.
In my own case I learned long before the term CFIT became popular that the biggest killer in VFR GA was the pressure to complete the flight in its many names - ‘press on-itus’, "get home-itus’, “I’ll just go a bit further and have a look” etc.
I briefed VFR pilots on enroute weather but they always wanted to “have a look”. Some died. I finally stopped detail briefing and said simply, “The forecast is Non-VMC; don’t go.” Some went anyway.
The first time I struck weather I did not like the look of (in a VFR-only-equipped C-152 on the return from a weekend trip away with another VFR pilot) I did a 180 and landed at an airfield in the clear, called the Tower where I was rostered that evening and suggested they find a replacement. The aircraft sat there for some weeks as the WX persisted. I came home by train.
This is just one of the things I learned from reading accident reports and one of the reasons I am still here at 74; there are plenty of reasons why I shouldn’t be, outside of flying, including a year in Vietnam. Bob.
I read the the reports, to learn from others when possible, to be aware of issues they experienced. It gives me an heads up, so I can try to avoid the same issues. It is less painful to me. I like to avoid pain & cost, if possible. I pass worthwhile information on.
“if a person really wants to be a pilot, accident reporting won’t change anything for those who are truly committed.”
That may be true, but GA isn’t served by having only the most dedicated pilots participating in it, if for no other reason than GA simply won’t survive with only those pilots.
I feel that on their own, accident reports have minimal useful value, and in some cases may even have a negative value (“that pilot was just an idot; I would NEVER do something like that”). And the accident reports that end with “the pilot’s inability to maintain control” are particularly unhelpful, because it can leave the impression that only Bob Hoover or the like are truly the only qualified pilots flying.
Without the “why” of someone losing control (for instance), all it is is another statistic. Was it because they were distracted that day by family issues, or maybe didn’t sleep well that night, or maybe they just didn’t make a bathroom break before the flight? Or was it truly because they lacked training or currency in one particular aspect of flying?
I feel a more useful use of accident reports is in the context of flight training or a flight review, and using it as a discussion point of self-reflection and “what would YOU have done at point A, point B, etc”. Hypothetical scenarios work too, but when used judiciously, accident reports can help to add a personal connection because a real pilot experienced it.
You’ve overthought this one Paul. If the accident rate is down, take some credit for it by having published accident reports and continue publishing them.