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Pilots high Death rate

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mattpilot said:
Those stats aren't quite correct, if you ask me.

Flying an airplane isn't necessarily an "occupation". They included every certificated pilot (from recreational to ATP) in those stats.

or so i think - opinions?
I don't think that was the case. I reverse engineered these numbers and got the following population sizes for each of the occupations:

Logging 91,991
Pilots 117,965
Fishers 43,981
Structural 65,957
Garbage 81,019
Farmers 818,667
Roofers 269,341
Electrical 120,000
Drivers 3,278,986
Taxi 276,860

It seems that 118,000 pilots is a reasonable population for those who are doing it professionally.
 
Swass said:
Those roofing numbers seem a little low.

Probably because roofers only fall one or two stories to the ground and end up with broken limbs and back injuries instead. Or they possibly could land in a bush or some shrubs which would lead to a lower death rate as well. :cool:
 
Wasn't there a study done about retired airline pilots and their mortality rate after age 60? From what I heard it wasn't too promising. Come to think about it, in 10 years I have only met 1 retired airline guy who was in his 70's.
 
I'm a little skeptical about the numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims there were 109 fatalities among pilots, 22 airline pilot fatalities and 87 commercial pilot fatalities.

I took a look at the NTSB database and here's what I found.

Part 121 fatal accidents in 2004, 2, with 3 fatalities
Part 129 (foreign carriers) fatal accidents in 2004; 0

that's not quite 22 dead airline pilots.

here's the rest:

Part 135: 21 fatal accidents
Part 133 (rotorcraft external load) 3 fatal accidents
part 137 (ag ops) 7 fatal accidents
part 125 1 fatal accidents.


that's 34 fatal accidents, those accidents had 22 pilot fatalities.

That's 36 fatalities in 121,125,129,133,135 and 137 operations.

That would mean that ther were 73 pilot fatalities in flight instruction, aerial photography, wildlife surveys, firefighting, corporate aviation and other commercial GA activities. Personally, I'm a little skeptical, particularly in light of how far off thier numbers are for airline pilot fatalities.

As a side note, only 3 of those fatal accidents (2 pilot fatalities) were in Alaska, so that doesn't have a very large effect on the national numbers.
 
4fanman said:
Come to think about it, in 10 years I have only met 1 retired airline guy who was in his 70's.

That has more to do with the fact that they were probably married three times. They're nagged to an early death.
 

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