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In addition to Wombats general stuff I will add the
following. It is very difficult to get good accurate measures of many accident
statistics and sometimes make meaningful assessments of what they really mean is
also not easy. Lots of pilots recall lots of things told to them with
various levels of veracity. Similar to Geoffs comments below I have always heard
of the experience levels of 100, 300 and 1000 hrs as "danger" points. But
realistically I have no proof of this and a statistical scattering would
probably nearly cover all levels of experience anyway.
However, having said that, a year or so ago I
downloaded all the fatal accidents off the ATSB website (about 100 or so at the
time) and tried to do some analysis of where flying went wrong. Note the sample
size was large, but incomplete over the time interval. It was only fatals. It
included all GA, helicopter and gliding accidents which had been publicaly
released.
If I ever feel really crazy I might download the whole
lot and try to analyses the complete spectrum of accidents, but it won't be
soon!
The following is the number of fatal accidents and the
experience levels of the pilot.
Number
Experience Level
2
0-30 3
31-100 9
101-300 31
301-1000 23
1001-3000 19
3001-10000 14 10000+ Now, having tabulated that, it doesn't tell us much as we don't know the distribution of experience in the whole Australian pilot sample. While (say) 300-1000 hour pilots seem to wipe themselves out in a big group, I also suspect the vast majority of Australian pilots fall into this category. Also if you divide number of accident by hour range (eg 3/70 for the 31-100 group) you get a number (I don't know what it physically represents) which steps down from 0-30 then stays roughly constant till the experience level goes over 1000 hours then reduces some more. This seems consistent with what you would expect as an indication of experience. Learners crash more, experience teaches you not to (seemingly after about 1000hrs).
FWIW the conclusions I came to in types of accidents were generally reinforced a few months later by a document released by ATSB or CASA in early 2005 regarding accidents in small aircraft. Out of interest (and to expand about my earlier comments re structural failure) the following stats are approximate ball park figures (for _fatal_ accidents only)
The biggest danger in flying an aircraft is LOW flying 15% (mostly aerial work, simply hitting "stuff") followed by engine failure 14% (not fuel related) VFR into IMC 11% CFIT 9% (ie not VFR into IMC and not "low flying") Fuel problems 8% Collisions 8%
Thankfully, for glider pilots we are rarely in a position to be exposed to those top 5 but we were highly represented in the sixth.
Airframe failure (includes loose seats etc) came in 10th on the list at 5%.
But an interesting thing to note was that many situations, eg engine failures (fuel or mechanical), manoevering, going round and the like lead to a "loss of control" ie spin or stall at low level. In fact a whopping 30% of all fatal accidents ending this way, even if they started for another reason.
Regards SWK
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Geoff Kidd Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2006 1:39 PM To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia. Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] ACCIDENTS/INCIDENTS 2005 Good question David
I have read or heard it somewhere
recently (perhaps it was during Kevin's Safety Seminar in Wagga) that low hour
post solo pilots aren't the key problem because they are still tentative,
safety conscious and the lessons/training are still relatively fresh in their
minds.
That same recollection was that it
was mentioned that about 250 -300 hours is where pilots get (over) confident and
often push the safety envelope (or have got away with things previously) and
they start to show up in the stats.
Does anyone else recall the above
being discussed.
Regards Geoff
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