https://chessintheair.com/does-soaring-have-to-be-so-dangerous/

My last post titled “The Risk of Dying Doing What We Love” presented the results of a statistical analysis where I compared the risk of flying sailplanes to other things we love to do such as cycling, horse back riding, paragliding, etc.

I showed that the risk of dying in a soaring accident is approx. 1 per 50,000 flight hours, which makes soaring per activity hour about 2x as dangerous as riding a motorcycle, 25x as dangerous as cycling, 40x as dangerous as driving a car, and almost 200x as dangerous as traveling on a commercial airline flight.

Does soaring have to be so dangerous?

To answer these question I read, interpreted, and analyzed about 250 glider accident reports.  My main sources were Germany’s Bundesstelle für Flugunfalluntersuchung (154 reports since 1998) and the United States’ National Transportation and Safety Board (93 reports for the past five years).  I chose the US because that’s where I do most of my soaring and also because it’s a very large country with varied soaring conditions including flatland, ridge, mountain, desert, and wave soaring. Germany was a logical choice because it accounts for about one third of all soaring activities worldwide, and also because the quality of its accident reports is particularly high. In addition, I also reviewed the equally detailed soaring accident reports for Austria since 2010 (25 reports) and read the 2019 EASA Safety Report.

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