In a submission to our Unicom department on the opposite page, Jeff Schweitzer makes the point that risk “should only be taken when the potential benefit clearly exceeds the risk, and that cannot be known if half the equation is excluded from analysis.” In other words, to properly assess risk, we also have to balance the equation by calculating the benefits of taking that risk. It’s really a risk/benefit analysis instead. He’s not wrong.
People wouldn’t fly personal aircraft—or participate in many other activities—if there weren’t benefits. That’s human nature. Some benefits we seek by taking risks are intangible and hard to quantify. Others can be readily identified and weighted. It’s a calculus we all employ daily in mundane ways. However, the problem isn’t that we fail to assess benefits when we analyze risk. Instead, the issue is the inaccurate values we assign on both sides of the equation.
