I’m deep into my ATP training right now, and one thing keeps coming up more than any procedure or performance chart: how we actually think about risk. In light of general aviation safety, I’ve been thinking a lot about maximizing survival and minimizing the chance of becoming another aviation news headline. The more I look at it, the more convinced I am that most of us are working with the wrong mental model. ### The Comforting Statistics We All Repeat We like clean numbers. “Piston engines fail every 1,000–10,000 hours.” “Jet engines are good for 100,000 hours, and with two of them you’ll never have to worry about it.” Those statements feel scientific. They give us a sense of control. They’re also almost useless for the decisions that actually keep you alive. The real world is messy. It’s gray. It’s highly conditional. The probability of a serious problem on any given flight is not some fixed industry average you can pull from a table. It changes dramatically wi...
Aviation. Science. Technology. Environment. and hacking the world.