Part of aviation – Korwel Photography

Few days ago, I read this post by Moose Peterson. The post is about great adventure, great people and sad tragedies. It was the third accident I heard about just this year, the accident that happened during an event. But in this case, people died in the air. And people died on the ground. And with all the sadness and respect, Moose says “It is just part of aviation”.
I do not agree with him. I have many friends who are pilots. My husband is a private pilot. I flirt with idea of getting a licence myself, took a couple of lessons. I do not want to believe that this is just “a part of aviation”. I do not want to accept flying as the risk and do nothing about it. I want to believe, as my instructor says, that it all lays in my and other pilot hands- that by checking the aircraft carefully before flight and making sure the weather is all right we reduce the risk to non existent. Or does it?

Tomasz says:

September 21, 2011 at 11:22 am

You should not accept flying as a risk, but you should accept risks of flying. Aviation is probably one of very few activities around that openly talk about all the risks involved. Does it make it less safe? I doubt, I’d say it makes it safer. All life activities have some risks associated with them, especially when you are pushing limits (air races, car races, boat races, bicycle races, every one of them have had tragic accidents).

Heck, just this night 5 people got shot to death on the streets of Chicago. I bet nobody prepared them for those risks. Drunk drivers? Do we openly talk about how great risk is involved in driving car on the public roads? No, people tend to forget about it unless tragedy hits very close to home. Aviation is a relatively small world and every tragedy is close to home.

Accept that risk and do whatever you can to mitigate it.