Overall safety of general aviation?.......

You didn’t answer my question.

Your answer applies to **all victims **of accidents, not only aviation.

Let’s not go overboard 16 hours? :Let’s not scare the guy away from flying :slight_smile:

For the OP, go for it, if you have the resources, it will absolutely be the most rewarding thing you will ever do (with a few exceptions.) I fly for a living, and no matter what is going on in the world, when I am driving to the airport to go fly, I have a little grin on my face the whole way. Even doing a lifeguard flight at 3AM.

Take it seriously, and follow the rules, and enjoy the hell out of it!

Stop thinking about and do it, life is VERY short, and your window of being physically able to fly is even shorter and less predictable.

Ironically, two victims were FLOWN to a hospital to receive treatment. If people didn’t learn how to fly, there wouldn’t be anyone to fly that helicopter. Troll somewhere else!!!

Congrats on your first hour of flight. As an instructor I deal with first flights on a weekly basis. Many people are all in the same boat as you. They want to fly but are nervous or afraid of what might happen if something goes wrong. By the end of the lesson though they are usually always enjoying themselves, and wanting to come back for more. A good point that I try to make\show on every intro is during the landing. Since I take over for the landing on the intro’s, I always leave the airplane a little high and pull the power to idle. On the approach I mention that the engine is at idle power, and doing nothing more than spinning the prop around while we glide in. It’s a good, reassuring way to show first timers, first hand, that an airplane can and will glide with limited or no engine power to a safe landing.

Good luck with your training!

So how did the first lesson go?

When I ask that question I get one of two answers almost every time:

  1. I didn’t go, instead I had to “insert phrase of choice”.

  2. That was AWESOME !! I can’t wait to go again.

If you answered #1, get your butt out there!

We all think about the risks everyday. If we don’t, then we aren’t doing our job. A good GA pilot thinks about the risk every flight, plans for it, thinks about it, waits for it, and reacts if something happens. Unfortunately sometimes we become complacent, we think we have done this flight 200 times in the past, and that is when we can get bitten. However, you are going to find a freedom that very few people on the planet can experience. For all of time man has dreamed about soaring with the birds, and only in the past 100 years has that been possible.

My theory is that we all have an appointed time to go meet the Master Air Traffic Controller. When that time comes, it is over. You can die laying on your couch from a heart attack with too many miller lites and cheetos, or you can make headlines. Like they say, it is better to burn out, than fade away!!

I remember reading on here a few days back, that 75% of all accidents happen within 5 miles of your home airport and 50% of the remainder happen on final or landing.

doing the math, you can reduce your chances of ever having an accident by changing your home airport to one that you will never land at, and dont ever land, that covers about 95% of all accidents.

just my $0.02