I have crashed thousands of times…
Well, that’s what they all call my arrivals.
I have made maybe 10 good landings in over 10,000 hours of pilot in command…
But I lived…
We won’t talk about my passengers… :dubious:
I think we rationaize a lot. After all we are all better than average drivers… Any accidents we are in are flukes, unlikely to happen again.
I have heard that any landing you walk away from is a good landing.
Two comments.
An old aphorism in aviation: “A fool and his money … are soon flying more airplane than he can handle.”
Launching with partial fuel is 100% ops normal & a professional & safe thing to do. When planned & operated professionally. That doesn’t mean you’ve got be being paid to be able to do the job right. But whether it’s your daily job or your once-a-month hobby, you do have to approach planning & executing every flight with a systematic & mature attitude & a realistic appraisal of the parameters. Which include weather, distance, load, proficiency, performance, and a host of other factors.
An airplane isn’t a car and the sky is not a freeway. And they’ll prove it to you pretty soon if you try to treat them that way. Shame about the other family members (both times).
Any landing you can walk away from, and you can still fly the plane afterward is a great landing!
I need to amend this story. I decided to look for the incident, and samclem turned up an article. It was a Cherokee, not a Bonanza. My memories are from ‘hangar talk’, which can occasionally be propwash. I doubt I can verify anything other than the guy was a doctor and that he crashed.
Sabotage.
Did the victims have life insurance? Why did the son survive both crashes?
[/not entirely serious]
But not in this instance! After the fatal plane crash, the family died in a second plane crash!
Not specifically an answer to the Op - but I will note the unusual example of Ernest Hemingway. He was in 2 plane crashes, in the same day. Luckily, he survived both.
He’s got pretty much of an airtight alibi, if foul play is suspected on his part, simply by being on the plane himself.
There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are very few old, bold pilots.