All good info.  But, as usually, we must be careful with the inferences from mis-used/mis-applied statistics.

To relate that private pilots make up 35% of the total pilot population and 48% of GA accidents is pretty useless by itself.

 

i.e. What percentage of airline and/or commercial flight accidents are attributed private pilots?  Of course the answer is zero.  That’s because the population of all airline/commercial pilots and the population of all GA pilots are not the same.  Thus, relating the % of GA pilot type accidents to the type % of the total pilot population (GA, commercial, and airline) is on the surface inconclusive and perhaps mis-leading.

 

It could easily be that 60% of all GA pilots are private pilots and when associated with the 48% private pilot accident statistic above leads to the opposite conclusion that, in aggregate, the private pilots are actually less likely to be correlated with the accident rate (generally fly in better weather on local flights, etc).

 

I’m all for ratings and training – but Jeff said “food for thought” – so I couldn’t help but comment.

 

 

Here is more food for thought.

Jeff


-----Original Message-----
From: Giffen Marr <gamarr@charter.net>
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Sent: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 7:07 pm
Subject: [LML] Re: Safety in our Community of Lancairs