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Bringing the same rules to light aircraft as airliners has actually made them less safe. Bringing a new four place plane to market has been cost prohibitive. Th

Bringing the same rules to light aircraft as airliners has actually made them less safe. Bringing a new four place plane to market has been cost prohibitive. The majority of new planes built today were designed in the 50’s on slide rules. Imagine if we were all still driving 50’s era automobiles. Luckily, the FAA loosened these rules this week.

8note 8y ago
That's assuming that over those years, the market would select for safer flights and not cheaper ones at the expense of safety.
- selectodude 8y ago
  The issue is that non-commercial aircraft are being held to the same standard as a 777, not that the 777 is held to an extremely high standard. There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172, period, and it's far too expensive for them to redesign it. So it's going to continue to be a 60 year old plane with updated avionics.
  - tdubhro1 8y ago
    > There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172 Genuine question: is the 172 really considered unsafe, googling "cessna 172 safety record" brings up a lot of articles suggesting it is as safe or safer than comparable aircraft - or are you saying that light private aircraft aren't very safe in general?
    - cjrp 8y ago
      Not specific to the 172, but a sizeable part of the training when getting your license is about what do when the engine stops (gliding, finding a suitable field/road/etc.) - and if you fly long enough there's a fairly good chance you'll have to put what you learned into practise.
  - anfilt 8y ago
    You do realize most airplane crashes are small planes.
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      And most automotive crashes are non-commercial vehicles as well.
  - John_KZ 8y ago
    >There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172 I assume you have nothing to do with aviation. The Cessna 172 is extremely safe. In fact I'd argue that they're safer than commercial flights, because accidents are much more survivable. Safety depends purely on the pilot and the extremely well-documented maintenance routines. All accidents I've ever heard of Cessnas are caused by pilot error with minor exceptions.
    - selectodude 8y ago
      Planes crashing due to pilot error is unsafe. Cars brake themselves now, Pipers have parachutes, B777s have redundancy on redundancy. The Cessna 172 is a very old design. Surviving an accident due to going too slow to die isn't "safe".
      - John_KZ 8y ago
        >Cars brake themselves now Uber clearly doesn't follow this trend. Neither does Volvo, apparently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47utWAoupo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47utWAoupo >Pipers have parachutes Only because they're prone to a certain unrecoverable spin in some configurations. You can get a ballistic chute on a Cessna too if you like. >The Cessna 172 is a very old design That's because it's a great design, and one that has been tested for 50 years. I'd take it over modern ones. >Surviving an accident due to going too slow to die isn't "safe". It is if you don't die.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  No. It's assuming that modern tech is safer and more reliable. (A debatable assumption, but also a pretty fair one.) Anyone that's ever looked to buy private planes knows that, except very small instructional aircraft, most are 40+ years old. My father-in-law just put an offer on an 8-seater built in the 1960s. And that's pretty much just the way it is for buying airplanes. It requires old tech and frequent maintenance, but it's still cheaper than the alternative.
claudius 8y ago
But the problem with that is not so much that it creates a market for old airplanes but rather that airplane certifications don’t expire – if the 50’s planes you allude to had to obey the same standards as new planes (after some grace interval of e.g. 10 years), the problem could be solved?
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > But the problem with that is not so much that it creates a market for old airplanes but rather that airplane certifications don’t expire It seems to me that the problem here is that new airplanes are cost prohibitive. Your solution to light aircraft safety is to make the majority of light aviation illegal or too expensive to function, like solving the problem of unstylish watches by outlawing anything cheaper than a Rolex. People seem to have the impression that GA has to be safer than driving, or safer than some other benchmark, before the safety level is acceptable. I am perfectly willing to accept some risk (the raw rate of fatality per ground mile is about 20x higher for GA vs. driving) even as a passenger, and I don't see why the FAA should be in the business of determining what risk is acceptable to passengers. I think the FAA's primary responsibility should be to the broader public, who experience the same risks on the ground regardless of how much or little GA they buy, rely on, or associate with. Some of the FARs make a lot of sense in this regard, for example the rules for single-occupant ultralight aircraft (including powered paragliders), and ideally a similarly pragmatic approach can be applied to other questions in aviation regulation.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    When planes crash they might fall on houses. That seems like a good reason to me to make them a lot safer than cars.
    - microcolonel 8y ago
      Well, also consider that you don't make GA safer than driving by regulating it. A lot of GA can be compared with the kind of unconventional driving done on remote or logging roads. GA is pretty safe where driving is also safe.
forapurpose 8y ago
> Bringing a new four place plane to market has been cost prohibitive. ... the FAA loosened these rules this week Is there any independent research that supports this? I've often heard the argument that regulations are too expensive as an excuse for lowering standards.
lisper 8y ago
> The majority of new planes built today were designed in the 50’s on slide rules. That's not true. Of the 15 most popular light aircraft models built in 2015, only one was introduced in the 1950s: the Cessna 172. And even that one underwent a pretty substantial overhaul in 1998. The most popular light plane sold in 2015 was the Cirrus SR22 with 270 units sold. The SR22 debuted in 2001. Source: http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/General-Aviation.html http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/General-Aviation.html
- hansthehorse 8y ago
  And costs upwards of 600 thousand new.
- romwell 8y ago
  >Of the 15 most popular light aircraft models built in 2015, only one was introduced in the 1950s: the Cessna 172. It's disingenuous to say that and not talk about numbers. There were over 44 thousand of them built, and they are literally the most produced aircraft ever. Cirrus is a blip on the radar compared to Cessna. At 300 planes/year they will not catch up with Cessna in a century even if Cessna ceased to exist today! In fact, the top six most produced civilian aircraft ever that are still in production are[1]: Cessna 172 (1950's) Piper PA-28 (1960's) Cessna 182 (1950's) Cessna 152 (1950's) Antonov AN-2 (1950's) Beechcraft Bonanza (1950's) Do you have the statistics on the market share of the "slide-rule" planes today? Not as a percentage of planes being built or sold, but of the ones in service. I'd bet on them being the majority. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_aircraft
  - lisper 8y ago
    No, it is not disingenuous because the topic at hand is "the majority of new planes built today." Obviously if you look at production through all of aviation history you are going end up overweight in older models. But that is just a reflection of the fact that planes are generally designed and built to last. It has nothing to do with the current state of the art, which is what the OP was lamenting.

8note 8y ago

That's assuming that over those years, the market would select for safer flights and not cheaper ones at the expense of safety.

selectodude 8y ago
The issue is that non-commercial aircraft are being held to the same standard as a 777, not that the 777 is held to an extremely high standard. There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172, period, and it's far too expensive for them to redesign it. So it's going to continue to be a 60 year old plane with updated avionics.
- tdubhro1 8y ago
  > There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172 Genuine question: is the 172 really considered unsafe, googling "cessna 172 safety record" brings up a lot of articles suggesting it is as safe or safer than comparable aircraft - or are you saying that light private aircraft aren't very safe in general?
  - cjrp 8y ago
    Not specific to the 172, but a sizeable part of the training when getting your license is about what do when the engine stops (gliding, finding a suitable field/road/etc.) - and if you fly long enough there's a fairly good chance you'll have to put what you learned into practise.
- anfilt 8y ago
  You do realize most airplane crashes are small planes.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    And most automotive crashes are non-commercial vehicles as well.
- John_KZ 8y ago
  >There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172 I assume you have nothing to do with aviation. The Cessna 172 is extremely safe. In fact I'd argue that they're safer than commercial flights, because accidents are much more survivable. Safety depends purely on the pilot and the extremely well-documented maintenance routines. All accidents I've ever heard of Cessnas are caused by pilot error with minor exceptions.
  - selectodude 8y ago
    Planes crashing due to pilot error is unsafe. Cars brake themselves now, Pipers have parachutes, B777s have redundancy on redundancy. The Cessna 172 is a very old design. Surviving an accident due to going too slow to die isn't "safe".
    - John_KZ 8y ago
      >Cars brake themselves now Uber clearly doesn't follow this trend. Neither does Volvo, apparently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47utWAoupo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47utWAoupo >Pipers have parachutes Only because they're prone to a certain unrecoverable spin in some configurations. You can get a ballistic chute on a Cessna too if you like. >The Cessna 172 is a very old design That's because it's a great design, and one that has been tested for 50 years. I'd take it over modern ones. >Surviving an accident due to going too slow to die isn't "safe". It is if you don't die.
paulddraper 8y ago
No. It's assuming that modern tech is safer and more reliable. (A debatable assumption, but also a pretty fair one.) Anyone that's ever looked to buy private planes knows that, except very small instructional aircraft, most are 40+ years old. My father-in-law just put an offer on an 8-seater built in the 1960s. And that's pretty much just the way it is for buying airplanes. It requires old tech and frequent maintenance, but it's still cheaper than the alternative.

claudius 8y ago

But the problem with that is not so much that it creates a market for old airplanes but rather that airplane certifications don’t expire – if the 50’s planes you allude to had to obey the same standards as new planes (after some grace interval of e.g. 10 years), the problem could be solved?

microcolonel 8y ago
> But the problem with that is not so much that it creates a market for old airplanes but rather that airplane certifications don’t expire It seems to me that the problem here is that new airplanes are cost prohibitive. Your solution to light aircraft safety is to make the majority of light aviation illegal or too expensive to function, like solving the problem of unstylish watches by outlawing anything cheaper than a Rolex. People seem to have the impression that GA has to be safer than driving, or safer than some other benchmark, before the safety level is acceptable. I am perfectly willing to accept some risk (the raw rate of fatality per ground mile is about 20x higher for GA vs. driving) even as a passenger, and I don't see why the FAA should be in the business of determining what risk is acceptable to passengers. I think the FAA's primary responsibility should be to the broader public, who experience the same risks on the ground regardless of how much or little GA they buy, rely on, or associate with. Some of the FARs make a lot of sense in this regard, for example the rules for single-occupant ultralight aircraft (including powered paragliders), and ideally a similarly pragmatic approach can be applied to other questions in aviation regulation.
- adrianN 8y ago
  When planes crash they might fall on houses. That seems like a good reason to me to make them a lot safer than cars.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    Well, also consider that you don't make GA safer than driving by regulating it. A lot of GA can be compared with the kind of unconventional driving done on remote or logging roads. GA is pretty safe where driving is also safe.

forapurpose 8y ago

> Bringing a new four place plane to market has been cost prohibitive. ... the FAA loosened these rules this week Is there any independent research that supports this? I've often heard the argument that regulations are too expensive as an excuse for lowering standards.

lisper 8y ago

> The majority of new planes built today were designed in the 50’s on slide rules. That's not true. Of the 15 most popular light aircraft models built in 2015, only one was introduced in the 1950s: the Cessna 172. And even that one underwent a pretty substantial overhaul in 1998. The most popular light plane sold in 2015 was the Cirrus SR22 with 270 units sold. The SR22 debuted in 2001. Source: http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/General-Aviation.html http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/General-Aviation.html

hansthehorse 8y ago
And costs upwards of 600 thousand new.
romwell 8y ago
>Of the 15 most popular light aircraft models built in 2015, only one was introduced in the 1950s: the Cessna 172. It's disingenuous to say that and not talk about numbers. There were over 44 thousand of them built, and they are literally the most produced aircraft ever. Cirrus is a blip on the radar compared to Cessna. At 300 planes/year they will not catch up with Cessna in a century even if Cessna ceased to exist today! In fact, the top six most produced civilian aircraft ever that are still in production are[1]: Cessna 172 (1950's) Piper PA-28 (1960's) Cessna 182 (1950's) Cessna 152 (1950's) Antonov AN-2 (1950's) Beechcraft Bonanza (1950's) Do you have the statistics on the market share of the "slide-rule" planes today? Not as a percentage of planes being built or sold, but of the ones in service. I'd bet on them being the majority. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_aircraft
- lisper 8y ago
  No, it is not disingenuous because the topic at hand is "the majority of new planes built today." Obviously if you look at production through all of aviation history you are going end up overweight in older models. But that is just a reflection of the fact that planes are generally designed and built to last. It has nothing to do with the current state of the art, which is what the OP was lamenting.