One book stands out among my numerous aviation books in my bookcase. It’s not the cover or the size. It’s the title - “Killing Zone”. The author did a statistical review of all the fatal accidents in general aviation and correlated those to the total time that the accident pilots had, splitting then in 50 hr increments.
If I had to guess which time group had the most number of incidents, I’d probably pick 50 to 100 hr group as those would be just out of school with freshly minted licenses. But that would be a wrong guess.
The group that had a massive number of accidents compared to all other groups was the 100 to 150 hrs group. The accidents then dropped off really sharply until the second spike for 1,000+ pilots.
At just over 130 hrs, according to the book, I am smack in the middle of that killing zone. And I noticed it too. No, I have not bent an airplane or injured myself, but I had a few mishaps that could have turned bad had I not reacted properly or tuned lucky (like flying the plane instead of fiddling with the radio at my first night solo or getting airborne on a bad landing before the plane had a chance to make it for the ditch).
I am actually glad to have found and read that book, as I believe it made me aware of the statistics and forced me to be even more cautious than I already am. I have called more flights that I can count, because it just did not feel right that day. But sometimes, everything is right and mishaps still happen. The last mishap came somewhat close to making me another killing zone statistic. And it was an invaluable learning experience, so I decided to share it. In the next post.
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