5 replies to this topic

[Fred0311]

Two friends killed in less than two years... Thoughts and opinions? Do you just learn to live with it every few years?

[Nearly Retired]

Yes, sadly. I nearly lost a very good friend in a crash about a month ago. Another friend is on a personal downhill spiral and I expect to read about him any time. You never get used to it, but you learn to live with it - because live, we must. Not to be cold, but each time it happens there's a tiny part of you that says, "Glad it wasn't me."

[Azhigher]

Yeah, it happens. Sadly the more pilots you know the greater the chances you read about a friend in an NTSB report. 2 in two years sounds high though, that trend probably won't hold.

 

All you can do is learn from it and tell yourself you won't let it happen to you. Same thing you should do with every NTSB report you read. Sorry for your loss, amigo.

[Fred0311]

Thank you both. And maybe it's kind of reactionary to start this thread but it's an aspect that's not discussed much. You know it will happen eventually but it's still shocking, especially so close together.

[Wally]

As others have posted, accidents happen in the aviation industry.  But hey happen to people who don't fly, too.  The broader your exposure to this industry, the more accidents immediately affect you.  It doesn't get any better as you get older: the longer you are alive, the more friends and family you will lose.

 

To the point as an aviator, or my view of the point:  learn from the mistakes of others and look for the points in the chain of events where preventing the accident was possible.  It may not seem so at a glance in some accidents, but a rational, proficient pilot was involved in every step of that process in the accident flight, who without benefit of hindsight, decided to continue.  Why did that happen, and what were the signals, alternatives, that you could use in the same situation?  Or, more important- where did the process become too dangerous for you?   I believe that taking the first decision to continue a problematic flight makes each successive choice to accept an ever increasingly riskier flight easier.

 

Sometimes, survival is the best possible outcome to the immediate situation.

[BH206L3]

With the helicopter part of aviation as a whole being so small, and it really is a very small segment. You will see friends die or guys you crossed paths with die in accidents. Just the nature of the business. You will also see it on the Fixed Wing side too.  A while back there was a really bad one in Hawaii, It's got to be sometimes around 2000 give or take, it turns out, the pilot and I crossed paths in Alaska one season 5 or 6 years before. It's like I said a very industry.