Flying isn’t safe. I will admit that. But it’s less dangerous today than it ever has been. It will be safer still five years from now. We should be celebrating this victory — but cautiously. Because we never want to slip back into our old habits and return to the bad old days when flying light airplanes was an exercise fraught with unacceptable risks.
In the old days we didn’t have adequate weather information. We relied on guesswork and what we saw out the window with our own eyes to stay clear of dangerous weather. Today we have a vast repository of weather data available at our fingertips, on the internet, on TV 24 hours a day and inside the cockpit with XM Sirius satellite weather and FIS-B data over ADS-B.
In the old days we didn’t have GPS moving maps to tell us precisely where we were, where the airspace boundaries were and the course we should fly to reach our destination. We had to build mental images of our location in our minds and translate that picture to a map folded precariously in our laps as we were buffeted by turbulence and wind, wondering which way we should turn to get around a monster thunderstorm.
In the old days we didn’t have terrain and traffic collision alerting technology. We relied on preflight planning and the “big sky” theory to stay safe. Today we have a better understanding of how plans can change, how situational awareness can lapse and of how certain parts of the sky (the traffic pattern around an airport, for instance) aren’t as big as we thought.
In the old days we didn’t have as thorough an appreciation as we might about some of the incipient dangers that exist in GA flying: external pressures to complete a trip in weather conditions that might get us in trouble; the dangers of loss of control on approach and landing; the special considerations of runway safety with regard to incursions and excursions; and the need to practice and be prepared to execute go-arounds, to name a few.
We also didn’t have tools like the IMSAFE and PAVE checklists and risk-assessment worksheets that let us answer simple questions about an upcoming flight (such as: Have I had adequate rest? What is the forecast ceiling and visibility at the destination? Will I be flying at night?) to come up with an overall risk “score” that can alert us that maybe the flight we are planning has crossed into the danger zone.
General aviation accident statistics compiled by the FAA and AOPA’s Air Safety Foundation show us that flying is becoming safer. The FAA is actually ahead of its safety improvement goal, with a GA fatal accident rate of under 1.0 per 100,000 flight hours for the first time ever. Lest you think rates are an inadequate measure (since they admittedly are a best guess as to how much GA pilots are flying), the total number of fatal accidents the last two years were 164 in 2013 and 184 in 2014 … versus more than twice that number 20 years ago.
Five years from now, as the data is crunched, training improves and even more capable safety gear emerges, the safety picture will likely improve further. Will flying a light airplane ever be as safe as driving a car or buying a ticket on an airliner? Probably not. But GA flying can be a lot less risky than it historically has been.
I don’t know about you, but I never want to see us return to those days.
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