[DanielBMarkham]

Airplanes are a great hobby for people who need to get out of the office, love traveling, and need a hobby that has a lot of little detailed things to stay on top of. Flying real IMC to minimums in a small plane is like solving a real-time fluid dynamics/trig problem, where if you fail, you die.

I guess there are people who do it for the danger, but the beauty of it is that you can get really down in the details and master things so it's not that risky. Once you really master the game, your biggest danger is yourself: get-there-itis, sloppy preflights, pushing things a little at a time, getting away with them, then pushing more, and so on.

I have done nothing in my life that I loved as much as flying. Mankind has been staring up into the sky for eons wishing we could fly. Now we can. Who wouldn't want to be part of that?

[barrkel]

Once you really master the game, your biggest danger is yourself: get-there-itis, sloppy preflights, pushing things a little at a time, getting away with them, then pushing more, and so on.

Normalization of deviance, for people interested in the literature.

[DanielBMarkham]

This is a big killer, moreso than most pilots realize. The reason it's so deadly is that it turns up in a bunch of crashes where it's not identified. That VFR pilot who was scud-running and ended up in some culmulo granite? He probably did it and got away with it several times before the crash happened.

I don't fly anymore, but when I did? I used to get all the aviation safety magazines and read them cover-to-cover. I also knew some flight instructor instructors; people known for teaching safety in the industry.

A surprising number of well-trained pilots get in perfectly good airplanes and fly them until they run out of gas. Just because you pushed it those last dozen times doesn't mean you're going to get away with it this time.

EDIT: One of the more unusual crashes I will mention since this is HN happened out in the mountain states. A couple of thousand hour+ MEII pilots get into a multi-million dollar brand new jet. It's CAVU -- clear skies, visibility unlimited. They then proceed to fly the plane into the side of a mountain -- all the time trying to figure out the new switches and displays in the cockpit. I still think of that one when designing UX. Aviation is really complex, detailed, fun, and full of math like programming. But it is also a life-and-death endeavor if you take it too lightly. If you're safety paranoid, take up boating. It's much more forgiving than aviation.

[JoeAltmaier]

John Denver ran out of gas while flying over a mountain pass. Exactly at the top - dropped and hit the tip of the peak while fumbling for the fuel switch.

[DanielBMarkham]

Another good one. From what I've heard, he was a good pilot. The switch was mounted in an awkward and non-standard position. (Behind the pilot's seat, I think?)

Aside from the downdraft issue, running out of gas at altitude in VMC can be very interesting, but it doesn't have to be fatal. Even in heavily-forested areas, in a small plane you can put out the barn doors and decrease your horizontal speed quite bit, especially with a headwind.

We had a guy in Virginia in the 90s, I think. He was a student-ish pilot in a 150 that ended up in IMC (fog) in the heavily-wooded mountains while running out of gas.

He slowed the plane down as much he could, somehow kept the wings level, and ended up on somebody's back deck. Walked away. That's not guaranteed, of course, but in general planes are crash-rated based on flying directly into something. It's the failure to maintain control that kills many times more than the crash itself. Heck, they used to have shows where people crashed planes on purpose.

[gomijacogeo]

No. He crashed into Monterey Bay. He likely ran one tank dry then sent the plane into a dive while he tried to move the fuel selector that was located over and behind his shoulder.

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