What Causes Airplane Accidents!

In a word, "pilots" cause most accidents. Most people think that airplane accidents are mostly caused by mechanical issues. This is just an old wives tale (OWT). More than 75% of all accidents point back to the pilot. Here's something that will surprise many non-pilots. A portion of pilot-induced accidents start before the pilot leaves the ground.

Here's an example, the weather is questionable, maybe fog or thunderstorms, for instance. The pilot decides that the weather will improve. It might, but if it doesn't, then there's the beginning of an accident. Most VFR pilots (visual flight rules) who fly into "instrument" conditions will crash within minutes. Usually they get disoriented and end up in a stall/spin which is usually fatal. Other endings could result in what pilots call CFIT (controlled flight into terrain). That's when you fly into what I call a cumulo-granite cloud (or a mountain hidden in a cloud).

Another great example of pilot-induced accidents is caused by "get home-itis". This accident type also begins on the ground. It's always better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than being in the air wishing you were on the ground. Get Home-itis inflicts a pilot who needs to return home and will do so against his/her own better judgement. It could be bad weather, or a tired pilot, or a slightly sick pilot who just must get home. Live to fly another day and wait til whatever isn't acceptable becomes acceptable.

Then there's accidents that happen after the pilot is in the air. The most disappointing accident is the one where the last words from the pilot were "watch this". It usually means he/she is going to do a maneuver, possibly at low altitude, where the pilot might become distracted from flying the plane, and augers in. This is easily avoidable, as are the examples above.

Here's an example of pilot-induced accidents, that will shock and awe most non-pilots. I refer to this accident as "fuel challenged" accidents. These are caused by the pilot running out of fuel while inflight. Nothing is more useless than fuel not in an airplane. This is an absolutely avoidable accident, don't you think! Sometimes pilots just don't pay attention, and other times they encounter headwinds which extends their flying time, and oops, I'm out of fuel.

Here's another pilot-induced accident that most of the time is fatal. In running out of gas, you may be lucky enough to glide to an airport, a road, or a field. But this type of accident has no wiggle room. It is a stall/spin at low altitude. These usually happen during takeoff or landing. On takeoff, the pilot does not maintain adequate airspeed, and stalls, sometimes ending in a spin which at low altitude is usually fatal. The same thing happens on landings as well. If you stall/spin at low altitude, it's usually fatal. But on landing we are making turns to base and turns to final. Sometimes a pilot may overshoot one of those turns and steepen his/her turn to stay on track. This can also result in a stall/spin since you are already going slow (to land) and fatal because you are at low altitude.

So there are many more types of accidents that include mechanical problems with the engine or a flight control, but they are a minority of the causes. Airplanes don't generally cause accidents, pilots do. So the best remedy is for the pilot to be continually learning about safety in aviation. Like a variation of a Dylan song, "if you aren't continually learning about flying, you're busy dying".