Guest Opinion: Simulation Comes of Age

Key Takeaways:

General Aviation (GA) experiences a persistent high accident rate due to weaknesses in both fundamental flight skills and higher-order risk management, leading to increased insurance costs and negative public perception.
The current training approach often rushes fundamentals and fails to realistically teach complex risk scenarios, contributing to the problem.
Flight simulators offer an economic and effective solution to address these training deficiencies, allowing for mastery of fundamentals and realistic exposure to risky situations, thus transforming "pilot training" into "aviator education."
Overcoming obstacles like restrictive regulations on simulator log time and instructors' desire for flight hours requires systemic changes from the FAA and flight schools, prioritizing comprehensive airmanship over simply accumulating flight hours.

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One of the few advantages of aging (or becoming “seasoned,” as my wife calls it) is gaining better perspective of our lives and careers. For me, a constant over the past 40 years has been watching the tragic consistency of the rate and reasons for General Aviation aircraft accidents.

On a personal level, I‘ve lost too many friends in such accidents. As an insurance professional, I’ve watched GA become crippled by rising insurance costs, particularly for product liability. And now, if the experts are correct, we could be facing another “hard” property and casualty insurance market making that challenge much worse.