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In fairness, quite a few failure modes for aircraft do not matter much if you are wearing a helmet or not.
You’d be surprised. Small aircraft crashes, if control is not lost before hitting the ground, are much more similar to car crashes than to large airliner crashes. For example, a recent “innovation” that saved a lot of lives was making shoulder belts (as opposed to lap only belts) standard.
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Preferred like people today prefer their private jet? It cost more than your typical annual salary at the time. I just read that the trip was still a 5 day journey, involving 20+ stops and spinning that takeoff and landing roulette wheel quite a bit.. The novelty factor might have been just as big a deal as time savings. It was something cool to try as an ultra wealthy globe trotter.
I read that it is statistically more dangerous to fly on a private jet than a commercial one.
There is zero chance 100 people could fly private airplanes everyday for their whole life and only one dies. I suppose if you look at 100 skilled pilots flying private aircraft for 50 years daily.. still would be a lot worse
After the crash, the Wright's built a new plane, the 1909 Military Flyer. It came back the next year to Ft. Myer and became the first plane, anywhere in the world, to be bought by a government (1). Orville Wright taught three Army officers to fly on that plane, and then, the Army being what it is, a fourth guy got a letter from Wright explaining how to fly and told "take this plane to San Antonio and teach yourself t…
#1 sounds like a dangerous incentive. But different times!
Fun fact: The first "Air Force" training occurred at Dayton OH. Pilots were fed by Mother Wright, and bunked in the brothers' own family home.
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If you can’t maintain altitude without losing significant airspeed, you’re just falling.
Even if you maintain both you can still be falling (orbits!)
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Gravitational orbits lose energy over time. Not really relevant on human timescales but interesting trivia if nothing else.
Due to friction? Or is it other physics?