3 ms·

Does a solo plane crash have a statistically smaller chance of hurting anybody else?

• KennyBlanken 2y ago
  Crashes are most common on takeoff and landing, and that means you're over populated areas. GA and military crashes that kill people on the ground happen all the time. Used to happen all the time at airshows, too - until airshows adopted very strict rules around planes never having a trajectory that heads towards the audience. But that's all beside the point. A 90 year old has no business flying a fighter jet, and I don't care if he was a former astronaut or not. He certainly didn't have any business doing so alone. Reaction time goes down dramatically with age and nothing can be done about that. Mental capacity diminishes, too; mistakes skyrocket, which is why we have so many elderly people ramming their cars into convenience stores and such. Health risks like a stroke, especially in an aircraft that can generate high g's.The body's tolerance for heat and cold goes down. It was incredibly selfish of him to keep flying.
  • knodi123 2y ago
    > flying a fighter jet It was a military trainer propellor plane. But your point stands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-34_Mentor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-34_Mentor
  • pfannkuchen 2y ago
    The area where he crashed is quite rural at least AFAIK (and I don’t just mean the water).
• knodi123 2y ago
  most plane crashes are at takeoff or landing, which means it's not as simple as calculating how populated their flight path is.... but yes, it's pretty rare to be smooshed by a plane.
• TylerE 2y ago
  He was flying aerobatics over a lake (or possible bay, etc) at low altitude on a summer day. Higher risk.
• jrootabega 2y ago
  I don't think it matters. Too much risk of a crash, hurting multiple people, one person, damaging property, triggering emergency response, is reckless.