Hacker News

I worked for a small successful company in the pharmaceutical industry. One of their founders died in a crash in his small personal aircraft. He was a really nice guy and very charismatic. I was not working there when the accident happened, but I was sad to hear about it.

I agree with OP's sentiment.

I clicked a news article a few months ago about a crash... Google has since decided I need to know about all future aviation accidents. I was surprised how frequent it happens. Two brothers were killed in a Cessna just the other day.

I suppose it's a combination of lower maintenance standards and pilot experience, definitely doesn't make me want to hop in a small plane anytime soon.

“Doctor killer” for a reason.

It can be monotonous and degrading, but commercial air is the safe way to travel.

Seems aircraft have been hard on tech this week.

I got my glider license at 16 and private at 17. Majority of accidents are human error. Though yes an accident with a plane is much costlier than one with a car.

I encourage you to read NTSB accident reports. The work the investigators do and the reports they assemble are unparalleled. There are also good parallels to complex systems in general.

Paywall there for me, or "allow ads."

Other than the fact that the crash happened, there doesn't seem to be any more detailed news yet, so the headline says pretty much what there is to know at this time.

Hmm? What else did I miss?

"autistic comorbidity"

Wtf haha. Everything's autism nowadays isn't it.

Perhaps it's just an alignment of having the money to buy a small plane and being interested in planes.

Some do. Sr-22 for example.

However, often if you’re handling things well, loosing an engine isn’t the end of the world.

A lot of accidents happen very close to the ground, at height wear a parachute wouldn’t necessarily be helpful anyway.

A parachute, a great solution for some scenarios, but for many, it’s not going to change the outcome. Such examples would be mid collisions, low altitude spiral dives, fires, or anything related to a shortage of oxygen. You also need to consider that during a lot of accidents, other factors, such as weather might be impacting the decision matrix of the pilot, and that might prevent them from using a parachute until it’s too late.

The parachutes are also another maintenance item in increasing the cost of running the plane, and generally, the airframe won’t survive the accident, so people are hesitant to deploy them.

Some do [1]. But in GA the costs to fly are so high that adding yet another cost means it is impractical for most GA pilots.

[1] https://brsaerospace.com/

Some do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst...