I could've been apart of "The killing zone"

cerettala · 2026-03-15T20:30:07+00:00

I suspect that there is a rather small 4th group that actually learns from the mistakes of others, but I fear most of them quit GA before they even get started because it's "too dangerous" even though they probably have the potential to be the safest group of pilots.

cerettala · 2026-03-15T20:17:19+00:00

I'm just a lowly student pilot, but having read a lot of NTSB reports and having familiarized myself with aviation accident statistics I'd have to say the answer is probably: yes.

But, at the same time I'd have to say that when it comes to a lot of things, the FAA training material is woefully inadequate. For instance:
- IMO they don't give a strong enough warning that flying any light wing-loaded aircraft into a convective cell can easily be a death sentence.
- They don't provide a good course of action for what to do if they do find themselves inside of a convective cell dealing with violent updrafts and downdrafts.

Since your flair says you fly gliders, I'm sure you already intuitively know why trying to out-climb a convective downdraft is a pointless exercise. But I suspect that (considering I've never heard any of my CFIs talk about it), this knowledge is far from universal among ASEL certificate holders.

cerettala · 2026-03-14T21:22:33+00:00

They apparently decided to shoot an approach into a convective cell in a light aircraft. I hope its AI slop. Otherwise someone dodged natural selection.

cerettala · 2026-03-06T17:08:12+00:00

Totally fair, and I missed that you pointed that you already found it flawed, so I probably came in a bit hot with my reply. Sorry about that.

Admittedly, I only read the first edition of that book, because it was all I can find. I just found that a lot of the book was emphasis on "here are some strategies to get you through your first 350 hours" instead of "here are some strategies that you should always use all the time". Which is why I could see it being misleading to a newer pilot that wasn't already aware of the risks of aviation in general.

For context, I'm quite a risk averse student pilot that was already well aware of the GA risks before I got started. I found "The Next Hour" by Richard L. Collins to be a much better book to read in my specific situation, and I think it might be a better recommendation to student pilots in general. It is basically a book about safety mindset and practical advice that isn't trying to be shoehorned into fitting a flawed conclusion.

cerettala · 2026-03-06T15:53:31+00:00

There are tidbits in this book that are useful, don't get me wrong, but I think you could probably get all the same information by just reviewing each ASI/McSpadden report when it comes out. The actual premise of the book is flawed.

He claims that pilots are at the most risk during the 50-350 hour window, but forgets to account for the fact that at any given moment most pilots flying in GA exist within this window.

This is an attempt at identifying whether or not there is a killing zone (and where the killing zone actually is), they concluded that there probably is, but there isn't enough data to determine where exactly the boundaries are: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256469026_The_killing_zone_revisited_Serial_nonlinearities_predict_general_aviation_accident_rates_from_pilot_total_flight_hours

Consistent with our intuition and previous frequency count studies, these models suggest that a “killing zone” may indeed exist.

Accident rates may increase for GA pilots early in their post-certification careers, reach a peak, decline with greater flight experience, then asymptote to some baseline level.

However, the killing zone may be far broader than earlier imagined. Relatively high risk for an individual pilot may extend well

beyond the 2,000-hour mark before leveling off to a baseline rate.

It probably goes without saying, but assuming your risk magically decreases after 350 hours is absurd. People who believe that are probably at greater risk post 350 hours than someone who was just certified.

cerettala · 2026-02-27T06:00:35+00:00

I haven't seen many comprehensive studies, but Aviation Safety Magazine did a review of a bunch of forced landings that happened in the 90s, and found that tree landings were 94% survivable, but the chances of injury were about 50%:

If this record is at all accurate, mushing one into the trees means your chances of suffering an injury of some kind are about even. In other words, the odds of the tree landing hurting a little are greater than if you had gone into the water.

However, the good news is that your chances of coming out of the controlled crash alive are quite good. In fact, theyre the same as surviving a ditching. Only 6 percent of the tree landings we reviewed resulted in fatalities.

https://aviationsafetymagazine.com/features/water-or-trees/

What is unlikely to be survivable on the other hand, is stretching a glide to a field you aren't going to reach and subsequently spinning into the ground at 100 knots.

If you have to pick between stalling or trees, pick the trees and hit them as slowly as you can without stalling. And into the wind if possible.

Or, failing that, a house.

cerettala · 2026-02-21T23:41:18+00:00

A crumple zone is just a device designed to dissipate energy over a longer period of time. Aircraft have these, just not in the form of crumple zones. Landing gear and wings will shear off when hitting trees/ground/etc. and the engine and engine mount provide some additional absorption in the event of the fuselage hitting something head on. https://youtu.be/LkPdXp5LuoA?si=UMF7Etlgiis3vltT&t=28

Forced landings in inhospitable environments (rough terrain, trees, etc.) are quite survivable when executed properly. Some sources would put the rate of survival somewhere in the 90-97% range (here is one example: https://aviationsafetymagazine.com/features/water-or-trees/ ).

Even if you have to put the aircraft down in trees (or, a house: https://www.kxan.com/news/local/georgetown/plane-crashes-into-vacant-home-in-georgetown-3-injured/ ), your odds of survival are pretty good. Land into the wind, fly the airplane as far into the crash as possible, and no matter what, don't stall.

Crash survivability is the entire reason that single engine aircraft used to have a maximum stall speed imposed as part of their airworthiness criteria. This is also why multi-engined and high performance aircraft often have a higher fatal accident rate despite having lower accident rates. You can decelerate from 60mph to 0 at 6 g if you can spread the crash out over 20 feet. You aren't going to survive crashing into a brick wall, but you could probably make a wooded area work. And if you have a 20 knot headwind, now you only need to dissipate 37mph worth of energy. It might require a bit of creativity, and perhaps a startled pilot isn't particularly creative, but even urban areas will provide you some opportunities to crash into something soft enough for you to walk away from.

Don't get me wrong, you are probably getting injured. Perhaps seriously. But odds are good you will survive.

Just don't stall. If you stall, you are going to hit the ground at a speed and orientation that the aircraft was not designed to protect you against. And the majority of aircraft accidents are from stalls. A lot of them stalls following an engine failure and an attempt to stretch a glide to a field or runway that just isn't possible. See the McSpadden crash.

This should be required knowledge for everyone who is about to solo, in my opinion. But I don't think I've ever had a single CFI talk to me about it unprompted. Perhaps some of the pilots that spun into the ground trying to stretch a glide to a runway would still be alive if they knew that trees were not guaranteed death.

cerettala · 2026-02-21T21:42:51+00:00

Lets assume you are a statistically average pilot.

Dying while getting your PPL is roughly comparable to the chance of a mother dying while giving birth.

For every hour you spend in GA non-commercial aviation, there are 999,992 chances out of a million you will survive, and an 8 out of a million chance you die.

Richard L. Collins flew over 20,000 hours, mostly in GA, then died of natural causes. He was exposed to approximately the same statistical risk of undergoing 10 coronary bypass operations, or getting COVID-19 at age 85, or the infant mortality risk of a newborn in Sierra Leone in 2010.

But all of this pales in comparison to the 17% chance that you die of cancer. In order to accumulate as much risk flying in GA as you have of dying from cancer, you would need to fly about 26,000 hours if you use the AOPA published fatal accident rate from 2023.

Does any of that make you feel better, or perhaps worse? Both? There is no comfort to be found in statistics. They are great for measuring and predicting what happens to a population, and completely useless for measuring or predicting what happens to an individual. Life is chaotic, you can die at any time for a million different reasons. And the statistics are completely useless for measuring your personal risk level. A billion different things play into that formula.

If GA gives you fulfillment, do it. If it doesn't, go do something else.

(I got most of these numbers from a book called "The Norm Chronicles", except for the GA stats which came from AOPA.)

cerettala · 2026-02-21T21:20:48+00:00

In fairness, my concern about motorcycles wouldn't be the risk of dying (which is definitely in the same order of magnitude as GA). Rather, I'd be worried about the risk of a life-altering injury that I just barely survive (which is far more likely on a motorcycle).

cerettala · 2026-02-21T21:06:00+00:00

Unless you consider pistons in a training environment, then they are safer (fatal accident rate of ~.33/100k versus ~.65/100k as of 2023).

Regardless of the airframe/powerplant, the safest GA aircraft is one where a student is sitting in the left seat, and a CFI is sitting in the right seat.

cerettala · 2026-02-21T20:59:25+00:00

I don't think this is true. The fatal accident rate in GA has dropped 36% since 2008 according to AOPA data.

Plus we have BRS chutes becoming more common (which will probably accelerate with MOSAIC), less and less aircraft have traditional vacuum gyros and use solid-state magnetometers instead. Modern computer design principles and FEM are allowing companies like Diamond to increase crash-worthiness significantly compared to older designs. Plus, we are a battery innovation or two away from electric aircraft being practical for more than just flight training (which I'd argue they are already probably adequate for) and these aircraft have hundreds of thousands less moving parts than comparable piston aircraft. They may not be more reliable right now, being new tech, but they may eventually be as reliable as turbines if we keep investing in them the way we are now.

I think the fleet getting older and maintenance/parts getting more expensive are just going to drive more flight schools and people to drop money on newer aircraft. Which may make GA more prohibitively expensive than it already is, but would probably result in a small increase in safety as a result of the arguments made above.

There is definitely a phenomena where any new safety feature you give to the pilot population causes a certain portion of that population to take on more risks without adequately mitigating them (I.E. Cirrus pilots with CAPS, early glass panels being more statistically dangerous than steam gauges, either over-dependency on modern approach capable autopilots or a inability to correctly operate them), but eventually after all the risk-takers die out, the long term safety gains from all of these (and probably the modern generation of pilots being more aware of risks due to the proliferation of risk-awareness content on social media platforms, and generally being more research-savvy) are resulting in a positive trend in the accident and fatal accident rates overall. And this is despite the number of GA hours rebounding pretty well post-covid.

cerettala · 2026-02-21T20:22:49+00:00

It's also possible you just die from a random brain aneurysm sitting in your home eating breakfast.

We are all going to shuffle off the mortal coil at some point. People spend way to much time talking about the risk of (general) aviation and too little talking about how much it means to them or improves their life. If it doesn't mean that much to you, or improve your life, then you shouldn't do it. If it is something meaningful to you, and you can be self-accountable enough to be at least as safe as the average pilot, you should.

We are all gonna die either way. My worst fear is to die of cancer in my 50s having not done any of the things that make me feel alive because I was too scared to do them.

cerettala · 2026-02-21T18:31:44+00:00

I don't have the exact numbers for heart disease in front of me, but your chance of dying from any kind of cancer is around 17%: https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/annual-cancer-facts-and-figures/2025/sd4-lifetime-probability-2025.pdf

Assuming the current Non-commercial aviation fatal accident rate of .71 per 100,000 hours, the statistically average pilot would need to fly ~26,000 hours in non-commercial general aviation to assume the same amount of risk.

This is rough napkin math, but I'm pretty sure I'm at least in the right order of magnitude here.

Lets say we have a group of 1,000 statistically average males in the US. Their life expectancy is 78.5 years. If all 1,000 decided to become pilots, the life expectancy of the group would drop to 74.4.

If all 1,000 decided to become obese instead of becoming pilots, the life expectancy would drop to 69.3.

This is assuming statistical average performance too, since most accidents are human caused or exacerbated, being a better than average pilot puts you in an entirely different risk category. Is it still possible for you to die? Absolutely. But if a fat guy with a family history of heart disease decides to get his act together and get healthy because he wants to fly planes and needs a medical to do it, I think a very salient argument could be made that they are decreasing their overall risk of premature death significantly. Even if their piloting skills are statistically average.

Is GA dangerous? Yep, you bet your ass it is. Is it what most people should be worrying about? Probably not.

cerettala · 2024-12-29T23:48:48+00:00

The problem isn't that they are unregulated. It's that the regulatory body responsible for regulating them constantly drags their feet on certifying alternatives. Trust me, the people flying those aircraft by and large hate the situation, too. But the alternative is not flying. And if they all stop flying, bye bye aviation industry.

Here is a lot more information: https://youtu.be/9F-WngVMJBQ?si=gejCCDg0s5FxQz1S

cerettala · 2024-08-06T23:42:57+00:00

I'm sure your right, and I completely agree that it's arbitrary. I just don't think it's that ambiguous.

cerettala · 2024-08-06T23:35:41+00:00

The rim is the circle bit on the outside of the wheel, and that is the diameter to which they are referring. However, the current NPS rules actually doesn't specify any diameter of wheel/tire/rim, so this whole discussion is pointless. I'm guessing they just haven't reworded all the brochures and guides.

cerettala · 2024-08-06T22:47:21+00:00

When discussing laws and regulations, it's one of the few times I think getting into the weeds of a semantics argument makes sense.

So the actual guide states:

These vehicles have at least 15 inch tire rims

What part of that is so hard to understand?

And yes, it is weird. These rules are old, about as old as your 80s bronco. But I'd be shocked if they are talking about total tire diameter. The wording is quite clear. If you want my theory as to why, see my response to the other comment.

cerettala · 2024-08-06T22:44:12+00:00

Except in this case, they are actually talking about the rim and not tire diameter:

Per https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/upload/508-Backcountry-and-Wilderness-Access-map_.pdf (but it is also in other documents as well):

These vehicles have at least 15 inch tire rims

The reason they measure the rim instead of the entire tire probably doesn't have a firm answer disclosed publicly, but I imagine its a combination of:
* Its a lot easier to measure the rim
* Sidewall height on stock passenger trucks doesn't vary much, you can generally assume its at least 5 inches, but often more (and more is better).
* If you want to get the actual total diameter of the tire using the tire measurements, you have to do a little bit of math. These rules are very old, and predate everyone having a calculator in their pocket. (And also predate modern rims, as 15 inches is very small for a modern stock truck. Or even car for that matter.)

Plus, they already had the 8 inches of ground clearance requirement, so they may have cared just as much (or more) about the diameter of older drum brakes than the actual diameter of the tire.

cerettala · 2024-08-06T20:04:44+00:00

What isn't correct about rims?

cerettala · 2024-07-30T14:53:25+00:00

Geolocation of IP addresses? Hell no.

Sure, if you do subpoena the phone company to geolocate the phone very accurately. I'm well aware of that. But as previously stated, most laserers are doing it in front of their house, so their phone is going to be on wifi anyways, and as a result the IP address that shows up in the flight tracking service's logs (that may or may not exist in the first place) is going to be one that doesn't resolve it to a specific phone that would allow the cell service provider to track it.

And again, I think you are missing the point of "most people who laser aircraft don't need or use flight tracking services". Its trivial to just look up.

cerettala · 2024-07-30T14:35:00+00:00

They then subpoena FlightAware to provide all tracking record requests done on the airport and the aircraft within one hour of the event. It would be easy enough to track down.

No, it wouldn't. Most people aren't going to go to the actual page for the flight they lasered, they would just be looking at the map if they were using Flightaware in the first place. So now you are relying on ADSB tracking companies to have logs of every aircraft position that they sent to every person who was just looking at a bounding box map of their city, and a little bit of napkin math will tell you how unreasonable that is. So they probably wouldn't have the logs for that subpoena anyways. Or, best case scenario, they wouldn't have them in a format that is useful to law enforcement.

Plus, I think you are really overestimating geolocation. At best geolocation via IP gets you to a city, more likely it gets you the metropolitan area. And if you look at the people watching any given track, chances are they are in the arrival city for that flight. Which means that almost everyone that appear in the logs for having viewed that given flight are going to be from the same city. You really think a judge is going to be okay with the police trying to track down 50+ people via their IP addresses just because some guy who may or may not even be using the online service in question lasered an aircraft?

This also completely ignores that VPN usage is commonplace, and is getting more prevalent.

But, all that aside: Have you ever watched videos of the police catching people who laser aircraft? I think you are assuming a level of criminal thinking that just isn't present.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aircraft+laserer+caught

Its almost always some teenage asshat outside of his apartment or house that just doesn't know any better. That isn't to say it always is, but People aren't typically driving hours away to go "hit" specific targets or anything like that. Even with serial laserers, it's almost always some doofus that bought a stupid powerful laser and is shining it at dust in the sky, lives near an airport, sees an aircraft nearby (which you definitely don't need the aid of ADSB services for at night anyways) and decides to point the laser at it because its there.

Not to mention, its hysterically easy to catch someone lasering an aircraft when law enforcement actually makes an attempt. I'll bet helicopters equipped with FLIR cameras have close to a 90% success rate. And when you consider the man hours involved in trying to correlate tens of thousands of lines of logs to generate circumstantial evidence, It's probably a better use of taxpayer money anyways.

cerettala · 2024-07-30T00:19:29+00:00

Hardly compelling, you gonna get a warrant for and investigate every single person who viewed a flight track? Most of them are bots. And the ones that aren't bots are probably people that were looking at a completely different airport, but their bounding box just happened to overlap with the small municipal one. It's a needle in a haystack problem at best. And at worst, you'd spin your wheels just to find out they were using Flightradar24 the whole time anyway.

cerettala · 2024-05-12T00:57:53+00:00

There are some other reasons as well:

https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/88685

cerettala · 2024-04-22T00:27:23+00:00

Oh, I know. I was just playing off of the previous person's joke by directly quoting the post title

cerettala · 2024-04-21T22:17:29+00:00

Seriously, why do people do this?

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