Barry Schiff has been writing almost as long as he's been flying. He is a retired airline captain for TWA.
November 7, 2002, marked 50 years since that propitious day in 1952 when I took my first flying lesson. The 13-gallon fuel tank in the nose was full, and 80-octane avgas leaked from the cork-and-wire indicator. It dribbled under the loose-fitting front windshield and onto the glareshield of that Aeronca 7AC Champion (N81881). I got so sick from the combination of fumes and maneuvering that it took weeks of building courage to return to the airport for my second hour of dual instruction.
Although I was tempted to give up, I thankfully did not. The desire to fly had become the most consuming passion of my life.
Although there are many pilots who have flown much longer and have many more hours than I do, a half-century of flying nevertheless provides a certain perspective, one that I would like to share on this fiftieth anniversary.
I have been hearing for most of my career that "the most dangerous part of any flight is the drive to and from the airport." Like most pilots, I have repeated this adage innumerable times to assuage the fears of nervous passengers. I have said it so often that I had come to believe that this comparison between flying and driving was really true without verifying how true or false the statement might be.
One day I gave in to growing curiosity and doubt and began asking pilots how many people with whom they were personally acquainted had died in general aviation accidents. I asked them also how many people they knew who had died in automobile accidents. Because virtually everyone we know drives a car and only a relatively few fly, it seemed logical that we (as a group) should know many more people who have perished in automobiles than in airplanes.
The informal survey began a year ago and so far has involved 133 pilots. Although the results are anecdotal and unscientific, a disturbing trend emerged. Ninety-seven percent of interviewed pilots (selected at random) personally know more people who died in general aviation accidents than who perished in automobiles. If the drive to and from the airport is truly more dangerous than the flight, the results should have been skewed significantly in the opposite direction.
During my 50 years in the air, I have seen a wide variety of studies and statistics comparing the safety of flying and driving. Some use miles driven, passenger miles, time spent flying or driving, and so forth. The problem with these statistical analyses is that they offer such widely varying results that they are difficult for me to accept. None is particularly convincing. My informal survey, however, seems valid. It seems logical. If so, it leads to the inescapable conclusion that flying a lightplane is more dangerous than driving.
Like most of those who fly, I have spent my entire career preaching the comparative safety of general aviation airplanes to novices and skeptics. Many of us go further and incorporate exaggerations to make our point more persuasive. Although well intended, this ultimately has the adverse psychological effect of simultaneously convincing ourselves of what might be a myth, that flying is safer than driving. In other words, we have become the victims of our own gospel. This may be one reason why so many pilots display complacency and overconfidence.
A corollary to this is that flying can be safer than driving, but only for those who take seriously their responsibilities as pilot in command. Given that 70 to 80 percent of aviation accidents are the result of pilot error, we usually can find the cause of accidents simply by looking in our collective mirror.
It is almost axiomatic that most pilots believe themselves to be above average. It is the nature of the beast. The problem with such thinking is that half of all pilots obviously are not as proficient and as safe as the other half, yet very few of us are willing to acknowledge that we might be members of the half that most needs improvement. This also applies to airline and military pilots, which is why an attempt is made to raise the bar so high for these professionals, an attempt to reduce or eliminate the "bottom half." And yet every group, no matter how elite, has members who are not as proficient and as safe as others.
One can become safer, however, with a change in attitude, and that is to acknowledge that flying can be dangerous, but that we have the ability to make it safer by adhering to principles that are known to minimize the risks.
For example, I have vowed that no flight is so important that it forces me to compromise my limitations or those of my airplane.
Sometimes, however, it can be difficult to abide by the rules of caution. It reminds me of dialogue from the motion picture A League of Their Own in which a baseball coach (played by Tom Hanks) tries to prevent his star player (Geena Davis) from quitting the team because staying is so hard.
"It's supposed to be hard," Hanks implores. "Hard is what makes it good. If it weren't hard, everybody would be doing it."
So it is with flying. If it weren't at times difficult and challenging, everybody would be doing it, and then pilots wouldn't be quite so special and privileged.
Visit the author's Web site ( www.barryschiff.com).
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