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RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

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11–20 of 34 posts

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably still safer than driving though.

Maybe not, found this on http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... : "How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours of general aviation. It is fairly safe to assume that when a plane crashes and someone dies, everyone on board dies. By contrast, the death rate for automobile driving is roughly 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles. Car crashes don't always kill every…

My father has his pilots' license and took me on many long-distance trips when I was young. I've toyed with the idea of going to get my license but when I talked to him about it, he tried to talk me out of it. Small planes are dangerous, he says, not because the planes themselves are inherently dangerous, but because the pilots flying them are typically inexperienced and don't have enough hours behind the stick to instinctively deal with emergencies when they happen. I'm pretty sure that your statistics would be lop-sided if you broke down the number of accidents into quantiles by the pilot's flying hours.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#12
> When he realised I wasn’t a mod, he didn’t want to know me.

So if you weren't useful to him, you were nothing to him..

> Martin seemed much more interested in helping others than amassing personal wealth

.. but naturally, he just loved helping people. This guy just waltzed into famous people's offices and added them to his network, and now he's left everyone posting adoring memorials about him, gushing about what a charming and wonderful person he was. Now there's a god-mode-sociopath if there ever was one.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#13

> When he realised I wasn’t a mod, he didn’t want to know me. So if you weren't useful to him, you were nothing to him.. > Martin seemed much more interested in helping others than amassing personal wealth .. but naturally, he just loved helping people. This guy just waltzed into famous people's offices and added them to his network, and now he's left everyone posting adoring memorials about him, gushing about what a…

He was 23 and he WAS very helpful I can attest to that.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not, found this on http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... : "How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours of general aviation. It is fairly safe to assume that when a plane crashes and someone dies, everyone on board dies. By contrast, the death rate for automobile driving is roughly 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles. Car crashes don't always kill every…

As a private pilot, small a/c flying is as safe as you make it. As much as pilots understand the concepts, they tend to fall back to baser instincts when an engine goes bad at the worst time.

Not to mention the absurd number of small planes that go down due to running out of fuel.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#16
post #2

What an interesting story. Did anyone here ever meet him?

Makes me wonder how many other people there are like this living incredible lives fit for a movie. And here I am staring at excel.

Maybe 1/10 of 1%? The rest of us are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs.

We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#17
post #3

Small planes are death traps...

Probably still safer than driving though.

The biggest issue is that the stats are skewed by commercial aviation. When you remove that, it's relatively risky per passenger-mile.

Small planes are certainly not safer than driving. I'm a private pilot and i've studied it at length (and I love flying).

I don't have time to braindump my research, as it's slightly hard to compare fatalities per passenger mile in autos vs per flight hour with light non-commercial aviation. It's about 100,000 hours per 1.9 fatalities which includes commercial travel. It's SIGNIFICANTLY higher in small planes.

The way I summarize it to people in casual conversation is: Flying a Cessna is safer than riding a motorcycle but more dangerous than driving a car.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a private pilot, small a/c flying is as safe as you make it. As much as pilots understand the concepts, they tend to fall back to baser instincts when an engine goes bad at the worst time.

Not to mention the absurd number of small planes that go down due to running out of fuel.

My father was a flight instructor for the Air Force in the 1950s. He said the most common causes of accidents were running out of fuel, flying into bad weather, and failing to warm up the engine before takeoff.

> As the single-engine Marchetti climbed during takeoff, the engine suddenly quit.

That's the symptom of failing to warm up the engine properly - it quits just after leaving the ground.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably still safer than driving though.

The biggest issue is that the stats are skewed by commercial aviation. When you remove that, it's relatively risky per passenger-mile. Small planes are certainly not safer than driving. I'm a private pilot and i've studied it at length (and I love flying). I don't have time to braindump my research, as it's slightly hard to compare fatalities per passenger mile in autos vs per flight hour with light non-commercial av…

I've tried to do this myself, and found it's pretty difficult task. When you remove really stupid mistakes pilots make (and we'd never do any of those things... we're not THOSE pilots... right?!) it starts to look a lot safer.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#20
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue is that the stats are skewed by commercial aviation. When you remove that, it's relatively risky per passenger-mile. Small planes are certainly not safer than driving. I'm a private pilot and i've studied it at length (and I love flying). I don't have time to braindump my research, as it's slightly hard to compare fatalities per passenger mile in autos vs per flight hour with light non-commercial av…

I've tried to do this myself, and found it's pretty difficult task. When you remove really stupid mistakes pilots make (and we'd never do any of those things... we're not THOSE pilots... right?!) it starts to look a lot safer.

Driving is also probably substantially safer if you don't make stupid mistakes.

Of course, you're also more at the mercy of others making stupid mistakes.

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