[mikeash]

Plenty of companies have dabbled in it through lax maintenance, insufficient training, or crew overwork. It may be hard to find ones doing it now, but much of that is because of the FAA's push for safety.

(And I don't know that it is actually hard to find ones doing it now. Certainly the airlines are almost ludicrously safe, but the context here is GA, where things can be much more lax.)

[microcolonel]

Safety is overrated. In CA it makes sense to strive for it, and boy, it's safe enough that people are worried about radiation! But in GA I feel like a bit more risk is incurred for productivity and efficiency reasons. Some stupid risks are taken, but I figure that's because the market tolerates it. Smaller planes also tend to generate less risk on the ground. Who am I to say that they should be safer; people are happy to drive cars of all things, no matter how crazy they must be to undertake that risk.

[pdelbarba]

Statistically speaking light aircraft are closer to motorcycles in terms of fatalities. On the bright side though, you're much less likely to me maimed in an aircraft accident :)

When people get upset about the FAA's safety stance in GA, it has less to do with the part 61/91 regulations (airman certification/operating procedures) and more to do with the equipment certification standards. A common example is the reliance on vacuum driven gyroscopic instruments when MEMS technology provides better performance with a much lower probability of failure. Up until recently the FAA made it almost impossible to retrofit old aircraft with generic glass panel systems even though these systems provide vastly greater safety margins when used correctly. I personally have experienced a vacuum system failure, but luckily not while in IFR conditions.

Beyond instruments, the bulk of the fleet of 30-50 years old and beginning to show it's age, but it's prohibitively expensive to certify new designs that incorporate more safety features like CAPS (parachute systems), composite energy absorbing seats/fuselages or digital engine management systems. We're also still entirely reliant on leaded fuel (100LL) due to cost hurdles in certifying engines that can run on JetA or anything else for that matter.