Plane Down in Payson AZ

[azpilot]

This happened a few days ago on 1/24, but I haven't seen a thread on this crash. This article was just published with a little more detail than the early reports that came out the day of the crash.

https://www.paysonroundup.com/news/...cle_2122acca-4dd9-50e0-80fa-9ed6fa5724ba.html

My sister has a connection with man that was killed, and she was peppering me with a bunch of questions last night about aviation in general. I took her flying to the Payson airport a while back.

This makes me think about the responsibility we have to our passengers. It is likely that the man killed did not fully appreciate the risk he was taking flying with a private pilot, low over mountainous terrain, so they could scout for wildlife.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Just flew a bit south of that spot yesterday.

A bit more detail and some pictures at the following

https://www.12news.com/mobile/article/news/local/arizona/small-plane-crashes-southwest-of-payson/

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Pilot was 21 years old with PPL issued 11/18.

Aircraft owned by the pilot who was from Fernley NV.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

When I first read this post I wasn't going to bite.. but here I am, thankfully someone else did

Does the average person appreciate all the risks they take getting into an Uber/Lyft/cab/etc? I really hate this notion that people flying "with a private pilot" are taking on some massive risk that they need to have prior consultation on. General aviation is as safe as the individual pilot makes it. Because there is such little standardization and similarity in the kind of flying you and me and someone else does the statistics really don't mean anything... at all

Person A might fly 100 hrs a year, mostly VFR, some IMC, 200-300 nm away for skiing / camping / other trips
Person B might fly 10-20 hrs a year, all VFR, the occasional weekend pattern or site seeing trip, gets scared in turbulence
Person C might fly 500 hrs a year, lots of IMC
Person D might be doing pipeline inspections
Person E might have 10,000 hrs (commercial pilot) and has a 150 for weekend tooling around

You really can't compare any of these people to each other. If person D's wing breaks off, and Person E forgets the control lock in place one day, and they both die, you really can't then argue that someone going up a trip with Person C has a high likelihood of death

I hope people taking a Lyft or Uber realize this may be more dangerous than riding with a professional limo driver.

I also hope people realize that flying in GA aircraft is on average more dangerous than taking a commercial flight and that their safety will depend on the owner and pilot of the craft, so they should perhaps think about that a bit.

I tend to agree generally because 1 fatality per 100,000 hours of flight is a fairly low risk and close to the risks we usually consider negligible in daily life, but not quite.