Terrence,
Drivers are safe? Over 40,000 people are killed on our roads every year.
Over a million are seriously injured. GA Pilots are safe? Part 91 flying is 25
time more hazardous that Part 121. Let's sit at the end of Runway 27 and watch
and listen. Heck, some pilots don't even bother to read the NOTAM before flying
to OSH. Some don't even know what a NOTAM is. Come to Oshkosh and sit down with
me and let's go over the Lancair accident statistics. You show me where the
airplane let down the pilot, versus where the pilot let down the airplane. Be at
the Lancair Forum at 1730 Thursday.
Airplanes have been improved immensely in the last ten years or so. I have
EFIS screens with moving map, datalink weather, a bitching betty telling me when
I get too close to stall. Sterling Ainsworth had that and a turbine powered
airplane.. but he flew into convective activity because he did not pay for the
Canadian WSI subscription, iced up his pitot tube (which most likely had
pitot heat off) and put the aircraft into a full power dive until the tail
departed. How much safer could his airplane been designed? He purposely
flew an airplane into conditions he knew before hand were hazardous-- did it
anyway and somehow this kind of accident is the airplane's fault? I call it
"free will."
Cirrus's have a ballistic parachutes yet pilots still fail to pull the
handle when they should. Too late, too fast, out of the envelope--fatal and this
is the airplanes fault?
Of course everything could be better with future techology -- but we ain't
got it today and even if we did you can't force everyone to run out and buy it.
There will still be someone 100 years from today flying a J-3 Cub to Oshkosh and
they will still be flying the Ford trimotor there. I hope to be there.
Regards,
Jeff