John Robb is an Air Force Academy Graduate (and COO of Userland Software, but that’s another story) – pretty interesting take on the recent air show crash in the Ukraine..
BBC. Ukraine blames pilots for fatal air crash. Frankly, this is the reason: >>>According to a recent military report in Ukraine, air force pilots get roughly 20 hours flight time per year, a figure that is over 10 times lower than in most NATO air forces.<<< It’s not the pilots, it’s the training. I wouldn’t feel really proficient unless I flew 20 hours every two weeks! Flying, particularly highly demanding missions, can kill you if you don’t train. Even with all the training the US allows you to have, my estimate is that 4% of the people I went to school with at USAFA are dead due to flying mishaps. That’s 35 out of the 870 that graduated in a class of 1,600. I probably have five incidents that should have killed me (two big crashes — great stories to tell when sitting in a bar). Luck and training saved my sorry ass. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]