While we might like to believe we’re on top of things and fully competent, the truth is well over half of all general aviation accidents are caused by pilot-related issues. Nearly 70%.
Of those a disquieting percentage involve fatalities.
Knowing that should give us pause. Our safety and that of our passengers is very much within our control.
Which invites the question: Are we really aware of the risks we face?
The obvious follow-up to that question is: Are we taking active steps to keep ourselves out of an NTSB report at some point in the future?
One type of accident that is almost completely within a pilot’s control is fuel management, both fuel starvation and fuel exhaustion.
The difference is not one of mere semantics. Fuel starvation occurs when there is fuel on board but for one reason or another the pilot cannot get that fuel to the engine where it can be converted to power. Fuel exhaustion is a condition where the aircraft simply runs out of fuel while in flight.
According to the FAA this isn’t simply a low-time pilot problem. Almost half of the affected pilots hold a commercial ticket or an ATP. Experience in the cockpit doesn’t seem to be a panacea that will protect us.
Two-thirds of these accidents happened when the departure airport and the destination are different locations. Put another way, general aviation pilots of all certification levels are suffering fuel-related accidents when they are traveling from Point A to Point B.
I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that complacency may well be an issue. The belief that we can make it to our destination without making an intermediate stop for fuel can literally be a killer.
Combine that very human decision-making error with those accidents caused by pilots who simply don’t manage their fuel system competently and we see a real problem. This is an issue that damages aircraft, raises insurance rates, injures occupants, and even results in the death of some or all on board.
If that doesn’t get us thinking more conservatively about something as basic as fuel management, I don’t know what will.
Another unfortunately common cause of GA accidents is CFIT, controlled flight into terrain. Often, but not exclusively, occurring during the landing phase of flight, CFIT describes an accident that involves an aircraft that is under positive control simply flying into the dirt or an obstacle. Roughly half of these accidents result in fatalities.
The real tragedy of these preventable accidents is that pilots tend to be blissfully unaware of the risk until it is too late to do anything to prevent a terrible outcome.
Again, a bit of defensive flying is warranted. Low and slow flying can be an appealing endeavor, but it comes with risk.
There was a time when many of us could cruise around the landscape at 500 feet above ground level with little risk of encountering an obstacle more challenging than a bird. Today, towers protrude from the surface of the Earth in startlingly high numbers. Cables often protrude from those towers. Those towers and cables present a real risk to pilots who stray too close.
It is also worth noting that the Earth itself is not flat. Rising terrain can be a considerable problem for those who choose to scud run below a cloud deck, often in an attempt to reach their intended destination rather than divert to an alternate.
An over-reliance on the wonders of the autopilot can also lead a pilot to misery should they be flying from flatlands into mountainous terrain without taking the appropriate precaution of setting an altitude well above the terrain ahead.
Loss of Control (LOC) accidents outstrip both CFIT and fuel management issues by a wide margin. Although LOC accidents can occur during any phase of flight, they most often occur in the takeoff and landing phase. Sadly, these situations seem to be rooted in the pilot’s misunderstanding of stalls, how they occur, and how to avoid them.
We all train for stall recovery. Often that training is done in such a way the student is intentionally inducing a stall with the recovery procedure already in mind. In the real world the stall may be a complete surprise, often at low altitude with little room for error in the recovery procedure.
As an example, an unanticipated stall on departure can catch a pilot completely off guard, resulting in a period of several seconds where the pilot is trying to figure out what is happening. Those seconds are precious in terms of altitude loss and directional control.
Should a yawing motion occur at that crucial moment the aircraft can enter a spin. At low altitude with high power and a confused pilot at the controls the outcome of this situation is not likely to be a happy one.
The vast majority of these three issues that vex us happen in VFR conditions. Include unintentional flight into IMC and the numbers get worse.
General aviation as an industry has made great strides in achieving an ever-improving safety record. As pilots we have a responsibility to play an active role in bettering that trend year after year, even if only for selfish reasons. None of us wants to be counted as a statistic.
The solution is known. Continuous training, an honest evaluation of our skills, and a commitment to reduce risk wherever possible can help bring the accident rate down even further.
But humans are cursed with a strong belief that the problem really resides with the other guy, not us.
Truthfully, none of us is infallible. We all need to make that extra fuel stop from time to time, to choose a higher altitude that puts us well clear of the obstacles below, and to fly a profile that protects us from flying into a completely unexpected stall by stretching a glide, or seeking altitude faster than the wing and engine can provide it.
Let’s be safe out there. All of us. Always. Intentionally.
Great article, thanks Jamie.
“Are we really aware of the risks we face?” That’s the real question isn’t it? Or maybe there something innate in our species that enables us to ignore the obvious.
I’m an instructor and recently got involved in an online debate with a private pilot about how to take safety seriously after he made a joke about an image of a pilot who had a prop hit his head and kill him on walk around.
I called him out on his tasteless joke and this young fella boldly said something that has bothered me ever since. Words to the effect of ‘I don’t plan on getting injured when I go flying’
My immediate thought was ‘no one does, but it still happens all the time’.
Arrogance, complacency, invulnerability… Call it what you will, how do we get pilots to have a better attitude about their own safety? To make them see beyond themselves and the flight they are making and realize they are part of a community whose laws and standards are a direct reflection of how we are all able to safely manage an aircraft.
I teach that aviators are a historic fraternity and that every time you flaunt safe practice you disrespect every pilot that didn’t come back and helped us gain a little more knowledge but I still come across pilots all the time who are brazen with their ‘it will never happen to me attitude’.
I regularly find myself saying to the student who complains of having to learn a regulation that does not appeal to them it is paid for in blood and we should be grateful for it, but a small part of me knows that some of those regulations are in place because some pilots have just had bad attitudes.
I see it in other instructors too, but never in myself, right?
It’s easy to have a rose tinted opinion of oneself sitting at the desk writing about safe practices, but we are all guilty of being human.
The more pilots flaunt safety due to bad attitudes the more regulations will come into place that will restrict all of our freedoms to fly. We may very well be in a golden age of aviation and not even realize it.
Pilots are trained to be aware of the risks they face but short cuts mixed with ego is going to continue to create sad statistics. Defeating unsafe attitudes towards aviation is a lot harder than teaching recovery from unusual attitudes in the aircraft.
The danger in aviation is buried in some dark corner human nature, the lies we tell ourselves and the complacency that breeds, the nut behind the wheel.