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No, but if there are 60 aircraft that have
flown and 11 of them have crashed, that would probably be considered a good
thing to know.
From: Lancair Mailing List [mailto:lml@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of vtailjeff@aol.com
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013
7:30 PM
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Subject: [LML] Re: 4P AUGERING IN
you won't know the rate because you don't
have any hours flown data.....
accident rate for each version
-----Original
Message-----
From: Bill Bradburry <bbradburry@bellsouth.net>
To: lml <lml@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Mon, Jan 28, 2013 2:26 pm
Subject: [LML] Re: 4P AUGERING IN
It would be interesting to see the Lancair
information broken down by number of aircraft flying by version of Lancair vs
the accident rate for each version. Does anyone have such information?
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)
•
Experimental – 2.33 (200X)
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.
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.
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