[subhro]

> Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving.

Respectfully disagree (as a 40-something year old aerobatic pilot) with the less sustained focus part, not the specialized skill part.

[filleduchaos]

I'm not a pilot, but I have a bit of a morbid fascination with aviation incidents, and I think I agree with both of you somewhat?

The average flight deck is a hell of a lot more complicated than the average driver's seat in terms of things the operator needs to pay attention to, so I'd definitely say that flying requires more sustained focus. However, during routine flight (not counting taking off and landing, because I know those are very high workload periods?) pilots have a lot more time and space than drivers do to recover from a situation before it becomes a catastrophic failure, especially when it comes to danger to others outside the vehicle. So I'd also say that driving on average requires better reflexes and reaction times to prevent accidents.

Take collisions for example; as GP alluded to, a driver's window to recognise and start responding to a developing problem is often mentioned in fractions of a second or a few whole seconds at best, because they can come out of practically nowhere. On the other hand, my impression of warning systems like TCAS and EGPWS is that the pilot has several seconds or more to start responding to the initial warning and still safely execute an avoidance/escape manoeuvre.

[mannykannot]

Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition. Things like spatial disorientation and losing situational awareness (particularly in IMC), not taking into account a changing weather situation, not tracking fuel consumption, navigational errors...

Technology is increasingly mitigating these risks, but as of now, they contribute to general aviation being significantly more risky, statistically, to its participants than driving, even when taking into account the prevalence of bad driving. On the other hand, it is considerably less dangerous to non-participants than driving is.

[filleduchaos]

> Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition.

I am aware of this (and as I already said this is why piloting requires greater focus), but I don't see how that changes the fact that there actually is a transition that takes a heck of a lot longer than going from a completely safe (given all available information and proper operation) to a completely unsafe situation takes on the road.

[mannykannot]

"Focus" is a vague term; if it was supposed to encompass the sorts of scenario I wrote about, then I have provided some some specificity for third parties.

Furthermore, I feel you did not fully comprehend what I was trying to say here, which is that there are certain scenarios where, if you have partially lost this "focus", you can suddenly find yourself in a situation where an immediate response of the correct kind (and one which is sometimes profoundly counter-intuitive, as in spatial disorientation) is required. The transition may have taken some time (not necessarily "a heck of a lot longer", though), but when this has occurred without the pilot being aware of the developing situation, then in practice it is no different than the sort of road situations you are thinking of.

Note that this is not a claim that the cruise phase of a flight is just as prone to sudden surprises as any phase of driving; it is a explanation that equivalently startling scenarios, without any perceived transition period (and perception is what matters), can arise in the cruise phase of flight (and that's even if we exclude sudden equipment failure.)

[filleduchaos]

I'm not sure how focus is a vague term - I thought in this context it pretty clearly means a state of concentration/active attention.

And I'd flip it and say that you don't understand what I'm trying to say, which is that while flying routinely you would have to lose focus in order to end up in a situation where you are blindsided by a signal and need to act on it immediately, while when you are driving routinely you can be doing everything completely right and be paying the utmost attention and still need to react near-instantaneously to prevent disaster on a routine basis.

In fact, bringing up sudden equipment failure just sort of reinforces my point. The response to the vast majority of failures, even stuff as critical as an uncontained engine failure, is not to fast-twitch take some reflexive action, it's to work through a checklist (even memory items are still a checklist) to be sure you're actually taking the right action - and there are tolerances built into both internal and external systems to give pilots time to do that.

Or to put it another way, flying prioritises a slower and more methodical approach to operation than driving does - prioritises conscious over unconscious decision-making. I think this article by a pilot (https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot...) explains my point quite a bit better than I can.

[mannykannot]

It is as if you did not read the final paragraph of my previous post, from which I think it should be clear that I am neither misunderstanding nor disputing the broad thrust of your position (though, personally, I am not routinely in situations requiring near-instantaneous reactions by the driver in order to prevent disaster, either as a driver or as a passenger in a road vehicle. I can see, however, that for anyone who prioritizes unconscious over conscious decision-making, this could be the case.)

What I am saying is an addendum to that broad point: situations do generally develop more slowly in the cruise stage of flight, but in those cases where they develop without the pilot being aware of that happening (which they can, and do in a small but not trivial number of cases), then they can present a situation requiring a near-instantaneous reaction to avoid disaster (if that opportunity has not already passed.)

By excluding takeoffs and landings, you are, of course, stacking the deck towards your point, especially if you take this to include flying in congested terminal airspace, particularly in IMC. By the time we exclude cases where the pilots are not doing everything right (and we had better exclude cases where other pilots, ATC and other external persons whose actions or failure to act could create a dangerous situation, and mechanical or systems failures that affect airplane controlability or structural integrity - all of these have led to disasters or near disasters), we have a point that is well-nigh unassailable, but bearing little relevance to the question of why airplanes crash.

The same goes for the linked article: it is is mostly right but there are exceptions. Given that it is from AOPA, I think it is worth noting that the aphorism (as stated from time to time by general aviation pilots) that "the most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport" is statistically false for general aviation itself (it may well be true for airline flight in many parts of the world.)

[subhro]

> The response to the vast majority of failures, even stuff as critical as an uncontained engine failure, is not to fast-twitch take some reflexive action, it's to work through a checklist (even memory items are still a checklist) to be sure you're actually taking the right action - and there are tolerances built into both internal and external systems to give pilots time to do that.

Let's see, a pilot flying in the yellow hits turbulence followed by a wind shear, and pulls up...