| Pete,
You make some good points but I don't think that is the whole story.
How many times worse would you expect the Lancair accident rate to be based on the theory of intersecting a more demanding plane with the fallibility of normal competent pilots?
Here are some numbers I dug up for a presentation I did at Sedona last year:
Fatal accident rates per 100,000 hours. (formatted for a powerpoint slide):
•Airlines - ~.01 (base line)
•GA rate – 1.11 (100X)
•Experimental –
2.33 (200X)
•Lancair - ~5 (500X)
The Mitsubishi MU-2 is a plane that had horrendous accident rates when operated by IFR rated commercial pilots. It is demanding, and also different. However, with a similar fleet size to the IV series, it recently has had 1 fatality in 3 years, a dramatic improvement. The difference has been mandatory training.
What I see in the Lancair fleet, particularly in the bigger faster models, is the intersection of a more demanding airplane with less well trained pilots, often with a "nobody can tell me what to do" or a "it didn't kill me last time" attitude. For some, it may be simply that they don't realize what they are getting into. A lot of the accident pilots were never on LML and/or never got proper training.
As a community, we have the option of training to a more demanding level. Would we still have higher accident rates than we wish if we got all that done? Probably. Would it be anywhere near as bad as it is now? No.
Personally I think even GA rates are unconscionably bad. They are driven by the "personal flying" segment pilots that don't have the benefit of rigorous training and regular proficiency work. In the Lancair fleet we recognize the issue and we do have the option of more rigorous training. We also have the option of influencing our peers to get it.
I don't see why with some effort we can't be below the Experimental accident rate of 200X worse than airlines within the next 3 years.
Colyn I don’t think the issue here is whether the IV can be flown safely. It can. Those of us on the forum are proof of such (full disclosure – I fly an ES-P). The issue is how much margin of error the plane offers when the pilot makes a mistake. Even the best of us make mistakes. Whether those mistakes kill us or not is a function of how many we make in a row, how bad they are, and how much margin for error the plane gives us. The first two are relatively independent of the plane you are flying. The third is entirely dependent. A plane like the IV, with very narrow margins of safety, will kill more pilots than a plane that has a much broader set of safety margins because pilots are human and make mistakes. So, in my opinion, relative to most other planes, the Lancair is less safe. Let’s stop pretending otherwise. That is just part of the price we pay for high performance. If you make a bad mistake, it is much more likely to kill you, which is why it has such a poor safety record. This is not the plane’s fault. Rather, it is because we as pilots can’t be perfect all of the time. |