transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Today on Pilot's Discretion, we're joined by Aviation Safety Researcher and Pilot Douglas Boyd. He talks about accident trends for GA pilots versus airline pilots, instrument proficiency and aeromedical risks. Pilot's Discretion starts right now. Hi Pilots, I'm John Zimmerman, and thanks for listening to Pilot's Discretion from Sportys. Remember to visit sportys.com/podcast for today's show links and access to every episode. You can also send us an email with your comments, questions and guest ideas at podcast at sportys.com. Today, my guest is Dr. Douglas Boyd. He is one of the most prolific researchers in general aviation today, having published nearly 300 peer-reviewed articles on a wide variety of safety topics. He spends his time analyzing the NTSB database not for stories but for statistical truths, challenging our assumptions about everything from aging pilots and decision making to the actual risks of flying experimental aircraft. He is both an academic holding a PhD in surgery and serving as a research professor at Embry-Riddle, and also an active pilot with an ATP certificate and a citation type rate. In other words, he's the perfect guest for this show. Douglas, welcome to Pilot's Discretion. Thank you. I've read dozens of your papers. I'd happily talk about any of them. But if I had to sum up one of the key themes in your research, it's comparing the accident record of GA pilots and airline pilots, and trying to learn from that difference. Before we get into all the details and what differences those might be and what drives them, set the stage for us. How are GA pilots doing overall in terms of safety, and how does it compare to airline pilots?

Speaker 2:
[01:44] Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news about general aviation is that safety has improved quite a bit over the last few decades. The not so good news is that when you compare the fatal accident rate, again, rate is important, it's anywhere up to about 200-fold higher fatal accident rate for general aviation compared with commercial aviation. And when I say commercial aviation, I'm referring specifically to part 121, so the air carriers.

Speaker 1:
[02:23] So to put it crudely, and this is more crudely than you would ever put it in one of your papers, but it seems like the central tension here is, is it the airplane or is it the pilot? In other words, is it the Cessna 172 versus the Boeing 737, or is it the pilot and their training and their experience and their recency of that experience? What do you think is the key difference there between those accident rates? What's driving that?

Speaker 2:
[02:45] It's a little bit of both, but I would say it's more the pilot. So remember with the aircraft, the air carriers have to use aircraft which are certificated by part 25, which requires a high level of redundancy. You can't have a single engine jet, for example, doing airline operations. But that's a minor difference. The major difference, John, as you said, is the pilot. The general aviation pilot just doesn't have the opportunity, very rarely is flying as frequently, and of course doesn't require the, shall we say, re-examination via a flight review as a captain under part 121, who has to do recurrent training every six months. That recurrent training is not one-hour flight. I mean, commonly it could be three days over a three-day period, and you're practicing all sorts of things in the simulator on the last day. So that is largely the difference, to my mind, why airline safety is so much superior to general aviation. And that's the major factor, to my mind.

Speaker 1:
[04:07] You've done some interesting research on this in terms of specific examples about degraded visibility or landing mishaps. So tell us some of those areas in particular where GA pilots do much worse than airline pilots.

Speaker 2:
[04:19] Well, before I address that question, John, I want to say that one has to be a little careful with the interpretation of the data. So what one does not know is how much does the airline pilot fly general aviation in a particular set of circumstances, weather, for example. So for example, we found that airline pilots are far less frequently involved in loss of control accidents when flying general aviation than your GA pilot, than your private pilot. But perhaps the reason might be partly because the airline pilot flying a Cherokee or Cessna 182 might choose not to fly an IMC, whereas the private pilot does. But with that caveat, loss of control is definitely a big problem for the private pilot compared with the airline pilot flying both flying general aviation aircraft. I mean, no two ways about it. The other thing which stood out from that study is airspeed mismanagement on landing. So private pilots, and we've done a few studies on this. In fact, it goes back to a study by NASA back in the 1970s. But I require us to have the predilection for landing very fast and bouncing the aircraft and having, you know, putting the aircraft somewhere for. Airline pilots far less often. Now, in this case, of course, you can compare airline pilots with private pilots because every flight does involve landing. Remember that airline pilots, essentially, every landing is a short field landing, whereas private pilots have a long runway for your typical general aviation aircraft. You don't like the loss of control authority with low speed. Do you come in hot and you bounce multiple times, you do a go round and you saw the aircraft. That's another area which definitely could be improved upon by the private pilot. Part of the reason is that we get very little training on that when we do our primary training or any advanced training in a light aircraft. Very rarely is one taught by instructors to adjust the approach speed for a reduced weight. Many general aviation aircraft have only one VREF approach speed, which is predicated on the maximum weight of the aircraft. Well, how often are you at maximum weight? You're there alone or you're there with a person, there's no luggage, you've burned off some fuel and you're adding an extra 5 or 10 knots for good measure. And you really should be 5 knots less, so it's a 15 knots differential and you float and float. There's a short runway then. So that's the other thing which stood out comparing airline pilots and GA pilots both operating in a general aviation environment.

Speaker 1:
[07:47] Now, I don't want to pick on GA pilots too much because I am one and I'm self-interested here. Are there areas where it goes the other way? Are there any areas where airline pilots seem to make a mistake more than GA pilots?

Speaker 2:
[07:59] Yes, indeed. What stood out is, of course, as you know, part 121 is extremely prescriptive. You know, everything is binary, yes or no. It's not, yeah, you know, the visibility looks bad. We can take off. It doesn't work like that. So not only are part 121 rules restrictive, but you have your standard operating procedures, which are overlaid on that and commonly even more prescriptive. What we found is that the airline pilot moving to a general aviation environment throws aside those restrictions and love doing things which aren't concordant, shall we say, with part 91 regulations. And we found quite a few of those as well. So they're not perfect by any way. So FAA infractions were stood out definitely with the airline pilots operating in a GA environment.

Speaker 1:
[09:02] It seems like proficiency or recency of experiences is a key topic here when we're looking at the difference here. You've done some research on this, I know, but at a high level, how much is enough time in flight in the last 90 days or six months or 12 months? What is, is there a magic number or at least a ballpark number that GA pilots need to be thinking about?

Speaker 2:
[09:22] Well, it's a very good question. Embry Riddle actually did a study, I mean, several decades ago, and it was a very, very nice study in which there were students who trained and were private pilot certificated at Embry Riddle. And they followed two groups, the ones who had completed, both had completed the private pilot certificate. One group who stopped flying, the other group continued flying. And then they retested them eight months later based on the PTS or what we know now as the ACS standards. And there was a very sharp decrement in the pilots eight months later, who had reduced their flying compared with those who had done somewhere around 54 hours in that eight month period. Now, I have to emphasize that the pilots who continued flying regularly, did not maintain those skills. It's just that the atrophy was delayed. The rate of decline was delayed. OK. So compared with those pilots who flew less than that 51 or whatever hours it was in eight months, the ones who did fly that, the rate of decline of PTS skills, ACS skills, was reduced. And of course, one of those skills, most importantly, was slow flight. And this, of course, is where loss of control can happen and there'd be a fatal outcome. Because when we were in the traffic pattern, we're pretty well practicing slow flight in the maneuvering of it. So there's not a magic number, but one doesn't want to be flying infrequently, for sure. And one wants to be going up with a certified flight instructor too. Personally, I adhere to the part, I'm not flying part 121, but I adhere to the part 121 requirements of going up with an instructor every six months. And that's my way, you know, it's to me, it makes me feel better that when an emergency occurs, hopefully because I've trained for that, I'll be better off in dealing with that emergency than if I did it once every two years as a flight review now requires.

Speaker 1:
[11:48] It's an interesting number because if you extrapolate that out, that's saying that to use the study numbers at least, 75-ish hours a year seems to be a reasonable number for proficiency. I'm going to guess a lot of GA pilots are not flying 75 hours a year. So if I'm in that camp, I just can't log more than 40 or 50 hours a year. Is that the best answer is go up with a flight instructor every six months, and so make more of the time that I do fly? Then if I want to choose that path, what are the things I need to work on? Slow flight for sure. Are there other things that are really critical? If I have limited time, in other words, what should I invest to them?

Speaker 2:
[12:26] Well, I think slow flight. I mean, this is now my personal opinion outside of slow flight, which they tested. That was the skill which atrophied the fastest, the quickest. But emergencies, in emergency, we sink to our level of training. We don't rise to the occasion. And if something is a spinal, if it's a muscle item, because you've done it every six months, hopefully you will deal better. We never know. We never know how we're going to deal with an emergency until we're in emergency. Everyone knows that if there's an engine failure and a single engine after departure, we're supposed to nose over, unload the wings, right? That's fine. We know that. But how convinced are we that we're going to do it in that event? I just lost a friend last year. We had an engine failure in Germany, friend and colleague, and there's a camera footage of the aircraft in a stall. He was killed. There's a post-impact conflagration. His daughter was badly burned. And all he had to do was nose over. There's a large field out of his departure airport that he could put it down into. He knew it. I mean, I knew him very well. He knew it, but that training didn't kick in and he flew infrequently. I know that. So, yeah, I mean, my advice which I adhere to is, you know, flies often. Like you, I don't do 80 hours a year. Typically, it's between 50 and 60. But hopefully, I try to make up by that by going up with an instructor every six months. I've no skin in the game. I'm not a certified flight instructor, so I'm not. I don't have shares in any company, any flight schools or anything. So, I'm saying this in total honesty.

Speaker 1:
[14:17] Let's talk about instrument proficiency because that to me even steps it up to another level in terms of how quickly those skills can atrophy. And in 2021, you wrote a fascinating paper, and it showed that 24% of the sampled pilots who did not fly six approaches in the last six months, they still launched into IFR conditions. So, it's hard to obviously prove exactly that we had truly non-proficient, non-current pilots blasting off into actual IMC, but it's highly suggestive. Why do you think that is? Do you think there's just a culture of ignoring those requirements? Or do you think there's something else going on?

Speaker 2:
[14:56] Good question. You know, life gets in the way. There's the human mentality, it'll never happen to me. You know, there's get theiritis as well. Colleagues have done a great study on aeronautical decision making, published two studies two or three years ago on the pressure to fly to get to something. But yeah, and you know, we were pretty thorough in looking at the Pilots at determining if they had done six approaches. We defined using flight aware, so ADS-B tracking on this cohort of Pilots. It was how many? 106 aircraft, single-owner aircraft, and it was 1,684 flights that we monitored to determine whether they had done six intermediate approaches or not. Now, you can say that they did it in a simulator. But I mean, how often is the simulator equipped just as your aircraft? Never. I mean, these aren't level D simulators, even your Redbergs, never the same. So we couldn't count that. But by far the majority of the pilots that we followed, the 105 airplanes owned by single-owners, had not completed six instrument approaches in six months. As you said, of those, a good 24 percent were launching in IFR or lower IFR.

Speaker 1:
[16:30] You did an interesting study, I think, that relates to this, perhaps, at least in some ways, on GA pilots who fly for business, people who are flying for transportation, not just recreational flying. And I wonder if that doesn't come into play here, the motivation that, well, I've got somewhere to be, I've got a trip to complete, and maybe I did four approaches and that's good enough. What have you found in general on people who are flying, that more transportation flying versus just sunny day weekend trips? Is there a difference in the overall safety record there?

Speaker 2:
[17:00] I don't, we did a study, I don't recall there being much of a difference between those, there's several years ago, those who had flown for business versus those who are flown privately. But we did do a study subsequently, which was specifically focused on ADM, aeronautical decision making, which would have captured that. And we use the PAVE, and I am safe, I am safe, maybe less, PAVE is more important there. And found overall that at least 60% of fatal accidents were due to poor aeronautical decision making. And of course, that would include the commonly known get thereitis. That would be one of the elements at least. You know, we need to, we need to improve on that. That 60% is probably a low number, because the NTSB is very good at capturing the situation as is the accident. But, you know, time and resources don't always allow them a deep dive into what was going on beforehand. What was the purpose of the trip and such like? So that 60% might be rammed up higher than that. That would be my guess too. So, you know, again, that's the prerogative of part 91. And as pilots, we really have to be good at aeronautical decision making. That's our, what we have to do to keep us safe, or try to keep us safe, as the part 121 where everything's prescribed.

Speaker 1:
[18:45] So you've read countless accident reports. You've studied the data. You've done many, many interesting papers on these topics. If we were to give advice to a new private pilot, say, I've got my ticket. I'm ready to go explore this world. I like to train with the CFI every six months. That's a great one. What are some other habits I should commit to early on in my flying career that will make a difference?

Speaker 2:
[19:09] I think keeping the safety culture is very important. So regularly attending fast safety meetings, the webinars that they have, listening to podcasts, for example. But keeping in touch, that doesn't or it's not always as easy. We have two, I'm in close to Houston and we have two relatively close FA safety team meetings monthly. So for us, but with all the webinars that there are now, keep up with that. Make a group of people you can talk to about flying. Because if you're an owner and you're a single owner, you're not flying out of a flying club or renting. You don't have the opportunity to talk to others. You want to keep the conversation going. You want to keep things because you're always learning. You never stop learning. I mean, even with an ATP, someone's always learning. It's a new avionics or whatever. So keep in that safety culture environment mindset. The other thing is newly minted Pilot is don't just hop into, okay, next step is IFR. IFR rating. Get some experience. Get some real-world experience. Push the envelope just a little bit. So build up your confidence, then step up to your IFR rating. I know flight schools will try to go, all right, what's the next step? Get into the IFR rating. My personal opinion is build some experience. Get some real-world experience before you step up to the next rating, whatever it might be.

Speaker 1:
[21:00] It's excellent advice, both the community part and having people you can talk to once you're out of that flight school environment, but also focusing on the soft skills and what you're actually learning, not just checking the boxes, building hours, accumulating certificates, but making sure you're learning the skills along the way. Many of those which don't show up on a checkride even in a logbook, but maybe it's a one-hour flight that doesn't satisfy any training requirements other than being very, very educational in a real world sense. So, excellent advice.

Speaker 2:
[21:30] The other thing I'd like to add is, not all, I'm in a flying club and I fly a Piper Saratoga and they have different Saratogas. When you move one aircraft to another, okay, especially if you're instrument rated, it takes some time to get used to the avionics. It doesn't matter what your qualifications are. I bumped into CFI who is flying one of our new Saratogas and she said to me, I don't know where to look because it's completely different and it takes a number of flights. So, say I'm going to fly that plane just VFR for the first few times, okay, three times and then I'll step up to marginal VFR and then about five, six, seven flights and now allow myself to do instrument. It doesn't matter how much time you have, you need to be, your eyes need to go automatically where to, you want them to, you know, CHT temperatures or TIT temperatures or airspeed or whatever. You don't want to be thinking about that.

Speaker 1:
[22:32] Douglas, let's take a quick break and when we come back, let's talk about aging pilots a little bit.

Speaker 3:
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Speaker 1:
[23:53] We are back with Douglas Boyd, who has done perhaps the definitive research in recent years on aging pilots. Douglas, there are a lot of details to discuss here, but at a high level, are older pilots less safe than younger pilots?

Speaker 2:
[24:06] Very, very good question, and the answer based on our research is no, they're just as safe. Now, you will see a number of reports and studies showing that no, aging pilots are more likely to have incidents, accidents or whatever, but there's something crucial which is missing, and we're the only study to actually use it. There's something called risk exposure. So if you look at the AOPA or the Air Safety Foundation annual reports, they'll always express things as so many fatal accidents per 100,000 hours of flight. That's what they're doing. They're adjusting for risk exposure, which is critical. Now, all of the reports to date, 22 hours, have just looked at the number of accidents by a particular age group, octogenarians, for example, 70-year-olds, not taking into account the amount of flying that that specific age group might have undertaken. So for example, when you're 30 or 40, you might be raising a family, be more financially constrained, you fly a few hours. Now you're 65 or 70, you're financially more secure. Everyone, the kids have flown the coup, you have more disposable money to fly. So you fly more. So there's more risk exposure for that particular age group. We were very fortunate to get, courtesy of the FAA, Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, flight times or what we call risk exposure for pilots, not each individual pilots, but those pilots say 70 to 80, 80 to 90. And then we could adjust the accident count for the risk exposure. And the bottom line here is that we found very little, certainly statistically insignificant difference in accident rate, and I emphasize rate, for the older pilots compared with the younger pilots. Okay. In addition, we drill down to look and see if cognitive impairment, because we get slower as we age, there's no two ways about it, was disproportionate for the older pilots. And again, it was not. Okay. What was different was physical impairment, and that's what dinged the older pilots, a heart attack, for example. Okay. That's where we have to watch out. But to my mind, the bottom line was that the age-adjusted accident rate was no different. To my mind, what I thought was happening is pilots are exercising good aeronautical decision-making. They're saying, for example, you know, I'm 75, I'm not as fast. Let me go up with another pilot. Okay. Or let me not do those cross-countries or whatever. And that's my guess. But the bottom line is we're doing pretty well when it comes to age-adjustment accident rate for older pilots.

Speaker 1:
[27:36] That's good news and certainly maybe not news that the insurance companies have fully taken to heart given some of their premium underwriting in recent years. But good news. And I would assume there's some element here of-

Speaker 2:
[27:47] John, if I could interrupt. Remember, we're looking at fatal accidents. The insurance companies are looking at payouts.

Speaker 1:
[27:59] Very good point.

Speaker 2:
[28:00] That's what they're most concerned. Whatever causes a greater payout, they're going to ding. We don't care about payouts. We're looking at a loss of life. Those are two different characteristics and type. If you have a bunch of people involved in incidents, which won't get into the NTSB database, unless it's a serious incident, but the insurance company has to cough up for that nose wheel or whatever or that inspection or the tear down, then that's what they're going to be concerned of, is financial outlays.

Speaker 1:
[28:37] Given this research you've done, does that impact how you feel about the age 65 retirement age for airline pilots? Granted, the slightly separate group of pilots, but do you think there's any information there that comes to bear on that question?

Speaker 2:
[28:51] Well, I don't think you can, and we mentioned this in the discussion of the paper, it's hard to compare because we at Part 91, we can at our discretion say, I'm not going to fly, this is too much for me at my age. An airline, you have a scheduled flight. You can't say, I'm not going to fly, right? So that now works against you. So I'm not sure if it's directly applicable. That's a big consideration there.

Speaker 1:
[29:26] It's a great reminder here that the flexibility we have as GA Pilots is one of the most powerful tools we have, but it cuts both ways. We can use that flexibility to get us into traps and say, I don't need to obey those minimums because that's just for the airline pilots. On the other hand, we can use that flexibility to say, I'm just not feeling my best today. I'm not going to fly because I don't have to. And that's a case of using that flexibility as a safety enhancement, which may be as obvious, but I think sometimes pilots view that flexibility as either one way or the other, when smart pilots can use it for benefit. Yes. All right, Douglas, we always like to end this show with a set of rapid fire questions we call Ready to Copy. I'll ask some quick questions on a range of topics and you can read back with your answer. Are you ready to copy?

Speaker 2:
[30:11] Ready to copy until I say standby.

Speaker 1:
[30:15] What is the single best lesson that GA pilots should learn from airline operations? If there's one thing you had to copy and paste from airline world to GA world, what would it be?

Speaker 2:
[30:28] Frequency of flight. Frequency of flight and recurrent flight training. I would say recurrent flight training.

Speaker 1:
[30:42] Is there an airplane model that you feel is statistically unsafe? That's just an outlier because of the airplane itself?

Speaker 2:
[30:50] No, I've never done a study, but again, one has to have the denominator. One has to have, well, how many hours does this aircraft fly? Now, that is possible. The General Aviation Survey does do specific models, but I've never compared them head to head.

Speaker 1:
[31:11] Which is a bigger risk, being too slow on landings, the classic stall spin, or being too fast on landings in a potential runway overrun?

Speaker 2:
[31:18] Well, when we did our study, slow landings were very few. They were overwhelmed by fast landings. So I would say fast landings. Remember, if you stall the aircraft and you're a few feet above, you're not going to die. We were taught over and over again, if you stall the aircraft, you're going to die. That's applicable to the maneuvering flight, when you're in the traffic pattern. When you're three feet over the runway, you stall the aircraft, you're not going to die on it. So the high-speed regimen is the one, which one has to be very careful. There was one case where someone did a high-speed, the propeller was damaged, he did a go-around and then it was a fatal outcome.

Speaker 1:
[32:07] All right, this is a bad choice, but that's what Ready to Copy is all about. If I have to choose between being overweight or out of CG, is one worse than the other?

Speaker 2:
[32:19] I do know, I would say you want to be in both. Remember that once you're outside of the weight limits, those V-speeds do not apply. Once you're outside of CG, you're asking for trouble. Be within for both of them. Be within, carry less fuel or whatever, but no.

Speaker 1:
[32:40] I sometimes hear the advice that, oh, as long as you're in CG, if you're overgrossed by a couple hundred, it's not that bad. I think there's plenty of research that shows that's not the case.

Speaker 2:
[32:50] Yes, yes, because the V-speeds don't apply, then. All your VA, VREF, none of those, you're flying in experimental and experimental conditions.

Speaker 1:
[33:01] You've done some research that suggests the vast majority of engine failures happened before TBO. So should we do away with TBO on engines?

Speaker 2:
[33:10] Very good question. No, actually the reviewer even asked about that. That won't make the manufacturers very, very happy. But no, the take home point with that is always, again, this goes back to your training, be cognizant of an engine failure. When you're flying at night, okay, be very careful. Where is that interstate highway that you can land on? Okay, be very careful about flying over urban areas, where is a concrete. So always prepare. In our flying club, we lost a pilot who had a Saratoga in it. He was flying at night over mountainous terrain, well, hilly terrain, lost the engine before TBO and passed away. He was killed in a post-impact configuration. Right below him was an interstate highway. You know, so always be cognizant of where you can put it down, because you never know. It's very rare, but aviation is very, very unforgiving. It's not inherently dangerous, but very unforgiving. So when you're flying over an urban area with a concrete jungle, where are you going to put it down? I had to ferry an aircraft just across Houston for the avionics, and the first time I did it, it was along I-10. I looked down, there were cars bumper to bumper. I said, next time I'm going the long way around to the south to avoid that. So again, be cognizant of where you can put it down at all times.

Speaker 1:
[34:48] What is the most surprising or controversial finding that you've had in your research? Is there one that stands out?

Speaker 2:
[35:01] I don't know, controversial, maybe unexpected would be the flight infrequency, both in terms of number of hours and instrument infrequency. In terms of controversial, it might be the age data where correcting or adjusting for fleet time by specific age brackets showed no difference in that. That probably would be controversial. So there's controversial and unexpected.

Speaker 1:
[35:39] Is there a topic you'd like to study that you haven't or you can't because the data just doesn't exist?

Speaker 2:
[35:46] Yes, a lot of our studies depend on having that denominator, so that risk exposure. There are studies in the past that we just haven't been able to do because of that. Now, we've got around it sometimes by using ADS-B data to develop that denominator. But in pretty well all instances, we only have eight months of flight data. So we have to then say that eight months of flight data is representative of the two groups for the time period of our study, for example, and you're making an assumption there. I mean, for example, a paper we just submitted was looking at BasicMed versus Class 3 Medicals. And in the aerospace medicine community, there's a big concern that BasicMed, you'd have a lot of pilots who falling out in the sky because of physical or cognitive incapacitation. And again, well, BasicMed, they're not reporting the flight data as you do in a Class 3 Medical Association. So first of all, we could only do the study up to 2017 when BasicMed cut in. And then even then, we had to make the assumption we had to follow BasicMed pilots and Class 3 pilots for eight months to make sure that their fleet exposure, so their risk exposure was comparable. But again, it was still, we're saying that eight months is sufficient over our entire study length, and we're making an assumption there. So that's a limitation of doing our research. In some cases, we haven't been able to complete the research.

Speaker 1:
[37:46] You mentioned you've been involved in aeromedical research on many of these studies. Is there something from the medical field that translates to aviation technique or an approach about research or safety that we can learn in aviation from the medical field?

Speaker 2:
[38:00] No, it's usually the other way around, actually, and more in context of checklists, when surgery is being performed. That's something which, for example, colleagues at Embry-Riddle have tried to push using H-facts, human factors classification into classifying medical events in hospital, for example. So I know of it more that way, rather than the other way around, not that I'm looking at that specific area, so it could just be my ignorance.

Speaker 1:
[38:41] I know you've done some work with people who struggle with the fear of flying. If I've got a spouse or a friend who hates flying, and I really would like them to fly with me, are there any reliable techniques that can help?

Speaker 2:
[38:52] Well, you actually bring up a good question, but the fear of flying we deal with is flying in the commercial environment, not flying in part 91. Because many of these people is a loss of control for them. If you take them up in your pipe or your Cessna, your Moon or whatever, they can just say, I've had enough, let me go back. Versus the part 121 environment where they're now on a flight from Houston to Los Angeles, and they have to abdicate responsibility. It's really two different sets of situations entirely. The other thing is, obviously, I can't talk about the fatal accident rate of part 91 compared with part 121. That's not going to help the private pipes. A flying friend once told me, I'm not going to be telling my wife about your statistics. So the other thing is that about 25% of fearful flyers, at least fearful of the commercial environment, is actually an anxiety condition manifesting as a fear of flying. So they're not concerned with the flight environment. It's more claustrophobia, acrophobia, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and we have to tease those apart. But for the people you're talking about, that's hard. I have specific questions. I would tell them to ask the pilot as to see how safe that pilot is rather than the other way around. So for example, I'm not sure that the guy who flies three times a year and wants to take up little Johnny, who's a neighbor, I'm not sure that I'd be advocating that flight with that pilot. For example, I would want to know more about his or her background before I sent up little Johnny or advocated little Johnny to find them.

Speaker 1:
[41:06] You received your PhD from the University of Edinburgh, which is in one of Europe's great cities, at least in my opinion. So what's a hidden gem there in Edinburgh? If I'm going there and I want to get beyond the guidebook and I've seen the castle, where's a place I should go check out?

Speaker 2:
[41:21] Well, you probably want to get out of Edinburgh. You could go, Mary Queen of Scots was born just outside of Edinburgh. So you probably want, there's a whole story there about her husband was a boyfriend being run down. So that's just outside of Edinburgh, I'd go there. But then there's the castle, the typical things in Edinburgh, which everyone does. I'd be more inclined to get down to England and visit places that people, American tourists don't go to like York, for example, or the Lake District, where you won't be inundated. Everyone says, well, I'm going to London, everyone goes to London. But Edinburgh, I'd be saying get outside of it. Apart from doing the usual, the Royal Mile is definitely because there are lots of shops and antique shops do that. But everything else, you know, they'll be just, it'll be tourist infested, especially over the summer, the festival and the Fringe as well. You probably want to keep out of there in August.

Speaker 1:
[42:26] Our last question is always the same on this show. You have one final flight. We want to know, what are you flying and where are you going?

Speaker 2:
[42:34] So I'm sorry, what's the question? I'm about to die and I'm doing a final flight?

Speaker 1:
[42:40] For whatever reason, you have one last flight, you get to log and you get to pick the airplane in the route. What are you flying and where are you going?

Speaker 2:
[42:48] Well, I do love flying the Piper Saratoga. I've flown the Bonanza as well. They're both great aircraft. I like them. I would love to fly down to the Caribbean, but again, it's flying over water and I would then have to resurrect my very dormant multi-engine rate rating and then take a Beach Baron 55 or 58 and fly down to the Caribbean. That would be my answer. But after I brush off my twin engine rating, which last time I flew was in a Citation 525, and that's probably 10 years ago, and an Island Hop.

Speaker 1:
[43:37] Douglas, thanks for being on the podcast.

Speaker 2:
[43:39] John, my pleasure.

Speaker 1:
[43:46] Thanks for listening to Pilots Discretion, brought to you by Sportys, training and equipping pilots worldwide for over 60 years. For more episodes and today's show links, visit sportys.com/podcast. I'm John Zimmerman, we'll see you next time on Pilots Discretion.