Do you think the revelation about the German Wings crash will .....

[dark_castle1]

have an impact (no pun intended) on the amount of people flying ?

I for one would have second thoughts now even though flying did not bother me before.

[bankhaunter]

The 24% figure is for crashes where the aircraft is carrying more than 10 passengers.

There only appears to be three incidents of pilot mental incapacity over the yearss.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm

[mustard-tree]

I have 2 friends booked to fly

One going to Spain in April and one going to Lanzarote in May

They dont seem to be apprehensive about their trips

[papko]

if you compare our present situation in the UK (and most of developed world ) 

 We are unimaginably wealthier , safer and healthier , than was conceivable a generation or two ago .

 Just think How many Brits died in the WW2 ( appox r400k )     , and then compare that to the amount of Germans that died (over 2 million "

 And the amount of Russians (approx 20 million )

Just think wider at all the bloodshed in China 9during civil war and Japanese invasion )

 Even recently consider the death toll in Iraq ? since 2003 ? and Afghanistan ? How many bombs , how many missiles , destroyed weddings ? innocent villagers ?

 500k ?

 Think of the last year and Ebola sweeping through West Africa , 10 k died ? even a few months ago , a ship carrying 300 African immigrants sunk with all hands in the Med  and its not the first or the only one , yet it barely got a mention in the media , with no investiagtion as to the mentality and motives for putting human beings into a death ship .

 Personally I think we in the  developed world , are just too fortunate , we have for the time being ensured our own comfort at the expense of those living outside our "world ",

 the tables will turn on us one day . 

[cee-dee]

Don't you think that "the developed World" made some of their own good fortune by working hard to improve their lot instead of lurking around either waiting for someone else to "do it for us" or jealously stealing it from those who had bettered themselves and their country?

[bankhaunter]

The media hysteria is largely affected by the failure by most people to logically assess risk, the German crash in no way means air travel is particularly risky.

A classic example is where, after a realtively minor derailment in Scotland, a woman stated that she hadn't realised how dangerous the railways were and in the future her trips to Scotland would be made by car, logic obviously flew out of the window.

[cee-dee]

Many years ago after a particularly bad rail crash, similar concerns (to that of air travel today) were voiced about the safely of rail travel.

As now, it was pointed out that compared to the number of travellers and the distances covered, that rail travel was statistically much safer than many other forms of travel (!!).

One retort to that was that although that statistically speaking it might well be true, any crash had the potential to be far more serious from the point of view of serious injury or death. Cue, air travel....?

[malacandran]

This is a very good point from cee-dee. Statistics don't always give the right answers. They can lead people to think wrongly, about things.

For example, consider nuclear power. This must be the best source of energy, yet it gets denigrated nowadays.

Why? Because a few nuclear reactors went wrong. Like at Chernobyl.  But that was due to Russian incompetence.

If German engineers had been in charge of the reactor, they'd have operated it correctly, and no disaster would have ensued.

So we'd still have nuclear power-plants. Instead of retrograde Green medieval windmills.

 Now, applying this to the German Wings crash. It seems a tragedy, if the pilot deliberately crashed  the plane.

Could the pilot have been misled, by modern Green propaganda?

[papko]

Don't you think that "the developed World" made some of their own good fortune by working hard to improve their lot instead of lurking around either waiting for someone else to "do it for us" or jealously stealing it from those who had bettered themselves and their country?

 No doubt they did , 

but every dog has there day 

 200 years ago France was the most powerful country in the World , and it took the might of all the rest of Europe , tl break its grip (and 25 years of war ) 

 150 years ago a single British Battle ship , knocked out the whole Chinesse Navy in an afternoon 

2000 Years ago Rome , controlled the Med  , and brrok no rivals for 500 years

 700 years ago a  nomadic chieftain from central asia , began his life work of conquest , by annihilating a rival tribe who had kidnapped his young bride

 It did not stop till 150 years later , by which time the his descendants , had subjugated , all of Asia, incl China , india , Russia , and the Middle east  

 "developed powere " of today , will have the same fleeting prescence in the history of the world 

[otherego]

"developed powere " of today , will have the same fleeting prescence in the history of the world  (papko)

Sounds realistic. I wonder whether increasing risk-aversion (perhaps fuelled by a desire to hang on to what they've got at any cost rather than take risks to move on to greater glories) might be part of the process by which empires and things decline?

I'm one of the most timid and risk-averse people I know. And guess what. I ain't rich.

It still seems reasonable to me to assume that some risks are worth assuming.

Back to the hazards of aviation - a couple of links.

Pilot murder suicides:

http://news.aviation-safety.net/2013/12/22/list-of-aircraft-accidents-caused-by-pilot-suicide/

A few statistics wrt aviation safety:

http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2014/07/travel/aviation-data/

According to the second article, 2011 saw something like 30 million commercial aircraft departures. If I get the numbers right, that's over 80 000 flights per day.

If 30 pilots committed suicide whilst taking everyone else with them every year, the risk of being caught up in such an incident would be one in a million.

Pilot suicide/murders taking out both the pilot and his customers that I can think of in recent times:

1994 - Royal Air Maroc ATR 42

1997 - SilkAir Boeing 737

1999 - Egypt Air Boeing 767

2013 - LAM Embraer 190

2015 - GermanWings Airbus A320

That's five over 21 years (and there are still doubts expressed over at least three, although some of these arguments are arguably political in motivation).

There are others involving no other crew/pax.

Whether there's any real need to do anything that's not being done already is, to be honest, debatable. Quick rule changes might hasten the effect of the Law of Unseen Consequences.

eg - if one pilot leaves the flight deck, a member of the cabin crew takes his seat until his return to monitor whoever tries to return to the flight deck. Great. As long as Cynthia Strap-in doesn't one day turn out to be a martial arts specialist with an agenda.

Or - make it mandatory for AMEs and other medical practitioners to advise authorities of pilots' mental problems, and guess which professional group might just show signs of being slower to seek assistance, or to self-medicate.

Very tricky ground to negotiate, and it's not really easy to see that a significant problem exists.

It might be your unlucky day. The odds are that it won't be.

Just enjoy the trip.