Death by other means — Interesting stats and good analysis on the safety (or?) of flying in small aircraft.
The typical journalist will immediately point out that 78.3% of aircraft fatalities are caused by general aviation aircraft. However, what they will intentionally fail to include in their discussion is that the lion’s share of flight hours, 62.3%, are logged by these same aircraft. This is an important detail, since the average citizen incorrectly believes that airlines account for the vast majority of flying hours in the United States. While airlines don’t crash all that often (0.34 fatal accidents per million flight hours), when they do crash they tend to kill a lot of people at once (34.6 fatalities per fatal accident). On the other hand, small aircraft crash more frequently (16.57 fatal accidents per million flight hours), but kill far less people at a time (1.85 fatalities per fatal accident). The net result is that general aviation aircraft, on an hourly basis, are only about 2.6 times more deadly than the airlines (30.73 vs. 11.82 fatalities per million flight hours).
Note the skydiving number. Apparently you are still safer jumping from the plane than landing in the plane.
This is true. When people say that airplanes are the safest way to travel they are ignoring that when a car breaks down, you stop… If you crash, and if you are driving at a safe speed and using the seat belt, you have a good chance of surviving. In a plane all depends on everything going 100% (or at least 98%) right. Otherwise everyone inside dies.
Planes are pretty safe when all mechanical things run well because of the highly trained crew – something that doesn’t happen to the same degree in GA – some say that’s the reason for the higher rate of accidents.
You are less likely to die jumping from a plane than you are in an airplane accident. That is because most people don’t jump from airplanes. One of the effects of government safety regulations as opposed to a free market system (where airlines would regulate themselves) is that people buy more safety than they really want or need. I have also heard that airlines aren’t allowed to compare their safety record in advertising.
Anyone die from sex?
If everyone that boarded a plane jumped out of the plane the stats of those skydiver deaths would go up.
Figures don’t lie, but liars figure. – Samuel Clemens
I’m a skydiver. Please don’t perpetuate that skydiving myth. (The other big one being that you have more of a chance being killed driving to the drop zone than from the jump you do while you’re there.)
There are only approximately 37,000 active skydivers in North America. These people make about 2.3 Million jups per year. Now, if you add to that all the non-members (like tandems, students, and those with only a few jumps) that number jumps substantially. We have no hard numbers on that, but I would suggest that maybe a million jumpst are done in NA by non-members. So now we’re up to 3.3 million, roughly. That is approximately 1 death per 95000 jumps, or 1 death per 65000 jumps for an active skydiver. (A student or tandem death is extrememly rare.) Now these are pretty good numbers, if you ask me.
(US stats here: http://www.uspa.org/about/images/memsurvey02.pdf)
However, if you look at the number of people who fly, or the hours spent in the air, or the number of people who drive, or the hours actually spent driving, you would that far more people spend far more time on any of those activites. And per hour driven, or per hour flying (commercially) it is much safer.
One of the troubles with skydiving is that it doesn’t equate well to anything. You certainly can’t compare time in the air to time in a car, that would be ridiculous. And you can’t really compare a scuba dive to a skydive when scuba dives last 20 X as long.
What you really need are the actuarial tables for skydiving, but you’ll find these very hard to come by, but it is worth noting that many US insurance companies won’t cover you for life insurance if you skydive.
What I’m say is this: skydiving is risky. You are hurtling yourself at the Earth at 120 Mph expecting a ball of nylon and lines to save you.
It’s fun as hell, and it’s not death on a stick, but it’s not safe.
(By the way, for anyone out there wondering about BASE jumping, a very experienced BASE jumper once put the fatality rate at around 5%, but that was just his estimate.)
BTW, did you know some GA planes now come fitted with a parachute that’s designed to save the ENTIRE plane? I think the first to sell it were Cirrus (http://www.cirrusdesign.com/) with something they call CAPS – Cirrus Airframe Parachute System. It has already been used and saved the plane in the few occasions it was actually used.
I don’t agree with the conclusions. What numbers say is that when I get on the small plane I’m 48times more likely to crash. That looks bad. I’m not sure how knowing that lots of people die together with me on the big plane should make me calmer.
Listen you chronies these are numbers, yes you may bike more than skydive but that is simply why there are more biking deaths than skydiving deaths. What would be a good statistic is the chances of dying while biking :
aka # of ppl who die on a bike per year/ # of biking journeys per year
compared to
# of skydiving deaths per year/# of skydives per year
Lost a very good friend, Joseph VonDietch, in Orange, Conn in 1983.(He was killed in a skydiving accident.) Unable to get anymore info on the details or info on his family. Can you help me with this?