Re: Can ex wife control children when with me?

In message <1187874339.495297.305830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Theo_Delight@xxxxxxxxxxx" <Theo_Delight@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
On 23 Aug, 13:13, Cynic <cynic_...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Secondly, if a pilot has a heart attack in an aircraft and there is
someone in the copilot seat who has a basic knowlege of flying (the OP
states that his son would be capable of landing the aircraft), it is
more likely than not that the other person would take control and get
the aircraft down safely, even if not too elegantly. In contrast, a
driver having a heart attack whilst travelling at any sort of speed on
a public road is *very* likely to lead to a serious accident , and so
IMO the risk in a car is *far higher* than the risk in a private
aircraft.

Perhaps Richard could tell us how many instances there have been (over
the last hundred years or so) of aerial pile-up crashes excluding war-
time?

A round number will suffice.

The article on this site actually provides quite a good assessment of the relative risks - I can't speak for its accuracy, but I am sure others can comment if they feel strongly enough about it:

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety

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 everyone in the car so let's use this statistic as provided, which is for an individual traveling in a car rather than for the entire car. So considering that the average airplane accomplishes a groundspeed of at least 100 miles per hour, those million hours of flight push the occupants of the plane over more than 100 million miles of terrain. Comparing 16 fatal accidents to the 1.7 rate for driving, we find that flying is no more than 10 times as dangerous per mile of travel. And since most accidents happen on takeoff or landing, a modern fast light airplane traveling a longish distance might be comparable in safety to a car.

We can also look at safety per hour. This makes sense for recreational pilots who have the alternative of spending a few hours flying around or spending those hours taking a scenic drive. If the average speed of car travel is 50 miles per hour, those 1.7 deaths occur in 2 million hours of driving. This makes general aviation, with 16 deaths per 1 million hours, roughly 20 times as dangerous per hour than driving.
--
Richard Miller
.

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