18 members of the Torino football squad also died in a plane crash in May 1949. The club was one of the most successful in Italy at the time and has never fully recovered from the trauma.
I assume you’re thinking of the Zambian football team, whose plane crashed off the coast of Gabon in April 1993, and the Oklahoma State University basketball team who died in January 2001. I don’t know why you think those wouldn’t have been big news stories if they’d been bus or train crashes? Maybe journalists think plane crashes are more spectacular?
This site has a list of famous people killed in air accidents, including several sports-related ones.
As my median car trip is about 10 miles and air trip is probably 700, that makes air travel significantly more dangerous on a per trip basis (using my median journeys). Anyway, I don’t want to diver too far into safety statistics - the OP was about “evidence” based on celebrity deaths. Auto deaths seem to be overtaking, albeit a number are people I have never heard of.
He was doing this as part of his job, not in the context of what the OP was talking about. Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, Greg Moore, and Neil Bonnet also died driving race cars but their deaths are not considered automobile accidents.
Besides Davey Allison, Alan Kulwicki, the 1992 Winston Cup champion also died in an airplane crash.
I think I’d have to take exception to this. I believe the overall safety record of homebuilt aircraft is roughly the same as for factory built aircraft of the same general type. And in particular, the Long-Eze that Denver was flying was an extremely safe design for its capability. In Denver’s case, it was human factors and pilot error that killed him. That particular aircraft had a modification that placed the fuel selector behind Denver’s head. That, coupled with the fact that he had not fueled the aircraft and was therefore forced to switch tanks at low altitude are what did him in. Apparently, he twisted around to switch tanks at low altitude and lost situational awareness and basically just flew into the water. The airplane was functioning perfectly well.
Sam, I agree that, overall, the Experimentals do have a decent record, but having some experience with them, I really must say there ARE risks you don’t have in factory built. Now, those of us conversant with the machines are aware of this, and for the most part we do compensate well. And you are correct, the Vari-Eze is a good design and does have a good safety record, but –
The point about the fuel tank switch IS a case in point. It was a modification of the original design and posed certain practical problems in use (as demonstrated). If you are AWARE of this sort of thing being a potential problem, you’ll work out how to deal with it on the ground prior to trying it in the air. But this was Denver’s first homebuilt - there’s a theory he was used to factory-builts where all controls work in a fairly standard manner and can be expected to cooperate without question. That’s not a healthy assumption with a homebuilt.
Me, I would not make that assumption about a homebuilt - but then, I started in homebuilts and ultralights. Got teased considerablly in the factory-builts for doing things like testing out fuel tanks switches on the ground before take off - but that’s a habit I learned early. Heck, even in a factory-built, the first thing I do is make sure I can reach and operate everyting - and I refuse to fly planes where I can’t. I’ve also gotten ribbed about my occassional 40 minute pre-flight, but I don’t take off until I’m satisfied. If I fly a plane regularly the pre-flight isn’t than long, but if it’s new to me or it’s been awhile, I spend the time.
There are too many right answers to the questions "Which celebrities died in a car? " and “Which died in a plane?” for this thread to fit neatly into GQ, especially since there is no good definition of who a celebrity is, or how their travel habits differ from the population at large. I’ll move this thread to MPSIMP.
A thread looking for verifiable safety statistics of various means of travel (car, commercial aircraft, experimental aircraft, etc.) would fit more readily into the GQ forum, and I invite interested posters to start such a thread if they care to. There are already a couple of such threads that you might want to read first:
Randy Rhodes from Ozzy Osbourne’s band. IIRC, the pilot was pulling a stunt to show off to Ozzy, who was in the tour bus, and the plan collided with a barn.
Car:
The singer of the British whitepower band Skrewdriver. His first name was Ian, don’t remember the last. I only know that as trivia.
Also the singer from the American rock group Snot.
In 1989, a DC-8 of Surinam airline SLM crashed while landing at Zanderij airport near Paramaribo. 177 out of 187 died.
On board were several members of the Dutch “Colourful Eleven”, a charitative football team consisting out of Dutch professional players of Surinam heritage. 14 of them died. Since the team only played on some occasions, the 14 deaths affected many teams in the Dutch competition - teams for which the players normally worked. It was a sad year for football, just one year after we won the European Championships.
Overall, I’m inclined to believe car travel is far more dangerous, though.
An applied stat professor of mine once asserted that air travel is safer when compared on a mile-per-mile basis.
Since planes move so much faster than cars, they fly more miles (more so for jets than small puddle jumpers).
If you compare deaths per time spent traveling, the respective risks are much closer.
As noted earlier in the thread, celebrities probably fly a higher portion of their miles on puddle jumpers than do other air travelers. If so, this would tend to mitigate the difference between air and land deaths for celebrities.
And his sister Kathleen Kennedy was also killed in a plane crash, IIRC. Both during the war.
And of course (as mentioned) later their nephew JFK, Jr would also die in a plane crash.
Is that all from memory, or did you search? Either way, you should also add all the air deaths that you get using the same method (memory or search) in order to make a comparison.
Auto—silent film actresses Gladys Brockwell and Florence LaBadie; silent film actors Einar Hansen and Charles Emmett Mack, musical comedy star Judy Tyler.
Airplane—dancer Vernon Castle; silent film actors Earle Metcalf and Ormer Locklear.