Need help with Stats

[Seth]

Talk about timing - Last week, the same day I closed on the Miisile, almost exatly three hours later, I was informed by the CEO of the company I work for that the parent company (my Broker Dealer is a wholy owned subsidiary), that word had come down that I was no longer allowed to fly myself on company business due to risk purposes.  The parent company also does not allow private charter flights - commerical only.  I've been under the radar for three years flying now, but they have pressed the parent travel policy onto our subsidiary. 

I understand that GA is the motorcycle of aviation compared to domestic major commerical US Airlines, just like regionals are less "safe" than the major domestic airlines.  I need actual stats, as I'm really bothered by this development and really hope that I can come to some sort of agreement with the parent company (which unfortunatly, I do not see occuring - It may instead help with a reason for resigning that could turn into other business opportunities).

I would like to give it a valient try however.

A great illustration is that fact that I'm delayed in Long Beach right now for three hours at least (to get back to DC) - the Missile when all is said door to door, may have been close on this trip).  I flew DCA - ORD - droe to Milwaukee and back and then - ORD - LAX - and am leaving LGB - IAD.   The wased tme on this trip has been huge, but for long distances, I'd still fly the airlines.

Another illustration of being safer is that for the first time in ages, no joke, I rented a car at ORD, pulled out to get on the highway to Milwaukee, and before I left the airport, a Taxi swered into my lane and sideswiped me.  Evidently a Limo ran out of fuel, and he swerved into my lane to avoid the stopped limo without looking.  After two hours of police, and swapping cars, I was on my way.  The best part is the police officer saw my pilots license as I pulled i from my wallet, and asked me about flying - the police officer was a pilot as well.  It all worked out, enough said. 

Forget flying alone, but driving around taxis, limos, and congested traffic near major airports vs smaller less congested GA terminal areas should be considered as well.  I have not been in a car accident in years, and this occured the day after being told I could only fly commerical as GA is more dangerous. 

I understand that this is the perception, and potentially the statisitcs point that way, but I will have to drive a lot of shorter distances now (less than 5 hours) where a commerical airliner is more costly and doesn't make sense time wise. 

I'd like links or copies of any official stats you have or where you can direct me.  This is again probably going to be a losing battle, but I need to fight it.

Thanks,

-Seth

[Parker_Woodruff]

Hi Seth,

I have no idea about the size of the companies that you're affiliated with, but it's not uncommon to have an excess aircraft liability policy with your employer named as additional insured.  It typically requires you carry $1MM smooth liab coverage on your aircraft (not a problem with your experience).

I have heard of up to $10MM excess liability on a Mooney M20J before.  Maybe with that kind of legal protection, your company would feel differently.

Hope you can fight it.

[FullyArticulate]

Google turns up lots of hits for official sources of the general aviation accident rate. (1.14 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours in general aviation in 2010) Segmenting that number is more difficult, but might help your case.

A company I worked for made me purchase key man life insurance. Although, they were more worried about losing me than being sued.

In another case, the company wanted plausible deniability. Threatening to fire you if you fly makes it awefully hard for your family to sue them claiming they forced you to fly as part of your job. How do you submit expenses? Do they buy refundable tickets for you which you can refund and then fly yourself? If you buy tickets on your own behalf and submit receipts, it's going to be hard to keep the fact you're flying from them.

 

 

[Ned Gravel]

Seth:

In the four large organisations I have worked in since 1971:  Canadian Department of National Defence, Standards Council of Canada, the Canadian Association for Laboratory Accreditation, and Exova Lab Group, only the first three allowed the use of private aircraft as a method of personal transport for business trave.  Exova's brokers were scared so, with the tacit agreement of my president, I simply charged the equivalent of car mileage and they did not care. 

Now that I am the owner of my own company, and I am using the aircraft for business travel, I will expense gas, parking and other things as part of my own business costs - so this is no longer an issue.  Maybe more so long as I avoid hassles from Transport Canada on the "for hire or reward" aspect of my use of the aircraft until I get my commercial rating.

But...and this is for the fight you are considering, I provided Exova, their broker, and their underwriters with the standard forms (statements) made to the other three organisations to indemnify them for my own use of the aircraft while on company travel and it made ZERO difference.  It turns out that private organisations (unlike the two government ones I was in before) are scared of insurance companies and these decisions are all personality dependent.  Fear based decsision making will, in the end, not result in going back to the way things were before for you. Wish I could tell you different, but my experience says that is how it will likely come down.

BTW:  Congrats on the new set of wings.  As well, I am not going into Gaithersburg, but Indian Head on the week of the 18th.  They changed the conference venue - but thanks for the offer of assistance.

[N601RX]

Quote: FullyArticulate

Google turns up lots of hits for official sources of the general aviation accident rate. (1.14 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours in general aviation in 2010) Segmenting that number is more difficult, but might help your case.

A company I worked for made me purchase key man life insurance. Although, they were more worried about losing me than being sued.

In another case, the company wanted plausible deniability. Threatening to fire you if you fly makes it awefully hard for your family to sue them claiming they forced you to fly as part of your job. How do you submit expenses? Do they buy refundable tickets for you which you can refund and then fly yourself? If you buy tickets on your own behalf and submit receipts, it's going to be hard to keep the fact you're flying from them.

 

 

[Cruiser]

IF your parent company has a risk management group you are fighting an unwinable battle. No amount of insurance, logic, data or safety info is going to matter in the least. If you insist on trying, get the NALL report from AOPA, they even have some canned presentations to help you with showing the info. You can spin this anyway you want but it will fall on deaf ears.

Best not to challenge them and do as suggested above. Take the car mileage and be happy. Stay under the radar.

IF you have pushed this to the point of the parent company forbidding YOU from continuing to fly on company business you now have a potential employment issue by violation of company policy. Your blatant disregard for company specific rules could get you fired.

[M016576]

Check the NTSB website for statistics: They release yearly statements on accident rates for all forms of aviation.  That may be the info you're looking for.

[DaV8or]

Seth-

Good luck in your struggle, but I doubt the stats will help you very much. The national airlines are second only to elevators as the the safest form of transportation in the world. Piston GA is about on par with riding motorcycles and if there were to be a national helmet law, I suspect we would fall behind them. Lots of people ride a motorcycle to work every day and get by just fine, but insurance companies aren't interested in antecdotal evidence, just raw, hard numbers.

I doubt we can ever get the GA numbers to be anywhere near what it is for cars. Your own story illustrates the differences. You had a collision with another car and everybody walked away unscratched. When two airplanes collide, how does that usually turn out? There have been enough, not too many, but enough fatal crashes while the trip was being conducted for work that the insurance companies are terrified of the potential law suits. If piston GA was statistically as safe as driving a car, you could make a pretty good argument and they would likely allow it, but it's not. Just the way it is.

[carusoam]

Seth,

 

When my company openly allowed private aviation, the travel policy had three requirements: Insurance, IFR aircraft, and IFR pilot.  

 

Our CEO, at the time, drove a Cirrus.

 

After two new CEOs, the travel policy was updated and omitted the paragraph regarding private aviation.  

 

The last company I worked for had a travel policy that clearly stated that private aviation was not allowed.

 

I hope this helps generate some ideas....

 

Best regards,

 

-a-

[flyboy0681]

Quote: Cruiser

IF your parent company has a risk management group you are fighting an unwinable battle. No amount of insurance, logic, data or safety info is going to matter in the least.

[FlyDave]

Seth,

I went through the same issue - almost identitcally!

I have worked for the same company for almost 4 years. I was allowed to fly my Cherokee from the beginning. I bought my Mooney in March of 2010 and but did not tell anyone about the new plane for about 4 months (for reasons I won't ellaborate on here). I flew to a meeting in northern California with my boss and mentioned that I bought a new plane after he said he "would wait to fly with me until I bought a newer plane than my 1967 Cherokee". We finished the meeting and I went to the airport, gassed up the Mooney, was sitting in the pilots seat getting ready to start up  - not more than 1.5 hours after telling him about the Mooney - and an email hit my phone saying I could not fly my airplane for work. I was freaking LIVID!!

I tried working through it with management over the next few months. Their insurrance agent said I needed to take out a $2M policy naming them as an insurred. I did that. They changed insurrance agents and the new guy said the company had to take out a policy that cost $10K. Needless to say they would not pay that cost.

Since then my boss has said "I don't care if you fly, just do it under the radar and charge it as miles driven". But I've signed a form agreeing not to fly so I won't.

In the end, we live in a litigeous society. Whether is makes sense or not, it's cents - not sense.

Best of luck getting flying approved. But, if in the end they don't let you fly for work, just go enjoy your new Missile. You got a great plane!

[Wistarmo]

To answer your question, for aviation statistics for general aviation go to the Nall report with AOPA: http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/09nall.pdf.  

The fatality rate is 12 per million passenger miles for general aviation and 5 for commercial aviation.

For driving, try http://trafficsafety.org/.  The fatality rate is 1.2 per million passenger miles for driving and 42 for motorcycles.  Like DaV8or, I had always heard general aviation and motorcycles were equivalent, but motorcycles are about 3X worse than general aviation.

For airlines, go to http://www.airlines.org.   The fatality rate is 0.01 per 100 million passenger miles for airlines.

[aviatoreb]

Quote: Wistarmo

To answer your question, for aviation statistics for general aviation go to the Nall report with AOPA: http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/09nall.pdf.  

The fatality rate is 12 per million passenger miles for general aviation and 5 for commercial aviation.

For driving, try http://trafficsafety.org/.  The fatality rate is 1.2 per million passenger miles for driving and 42 for motorcycles.  Like DaV8or, I had always heard general aviation and motorcycles were equivalent, but motorcycles are about 3X worse than general aviation.

For airlines, go to http://www.airlines.org.   The fatality rate is 0.01 per 100 million passenger miles for airlines.

[DaV8or]

Quote: Wistarmo

For driving, try http://trafficsafety.org/.  The fatality rate is 1.2 per million passenger miles for driving and 42 for motorcycles.  Like DaV8or, I had always heard general aviation and motorcycles were equivalent, but motorcycles are about 3X worse than general aviation.

[Wistarmo]

The Nall Report uses Part 91 fixed-wing versus Part 135 (charter and cargo) and Part 137 (aerial application) fixed-wing to differentiate between non-commercial and commercial. (Part 133 is for commercial helicopter).  These numbers apparently do not include airlines, which are separate.  The domestic airline fatality rate in many years is 0.

[Cris]

The points mentioned above pretty much cover my own experiences as well but in the end it boils down to an understanding boss. As a practicle matter I was told verbally by a company that I worked for that I could not use the A/C for business transport. When I questioned it with risk management like you would  like to do I was told "off the record"  the company was insured for individuals to fly themselves since insurance company's recognize that employees will violate the travel rules but they need to mitigate it as best as possible. With that understanding I continued to fly & put in receipts as if I drove & did my best to stay under the radar. A differant boss would not have been so understanding.

[David Mazer]

This may be a really silly question, BUT, here I go.  If commercial flying is "safer" than private GA, what are the stats on private GA flights with commercially rated pilots?  Does that mean we could substantially improve our stats by requiring a higher level of proficiency for a private license?  Does that mean I can improve my personal odds by getting a commercial license?  Do we KNOW the answers to this from documented stats?

[scottfromiowa]

Hi Seth:

I travel the whole state of Iowa as a field consultant for an insurance company.  My current employer does NOT want me flying my aircraft for work purposes...I definitely COULD go "under the radar" and fly for some western extreme appointments that REALLY benefit from aviation (time savings), but I don't.  If my company wants to pay for me to be more inefficient...so be it.  I don't want to jeopardize my employment over using my plane when told NOT to do it.  Is it a major bummer?  You bet.

Enjoy flying your Missile for pleasure...I'm sure the pleasure factor WILL be very high...and fast.

Scott (good)

 

Go for it Seth.  Fly that Missile as often as you safely can.  Enjoy the benefits that your plane provides.  Keep it on the down low, be more productive...your company will NEVER KNOW.

Scott (bad)

ps-with all the texting and cell phone abuse I see in my 30k business miles it is likely that general aviation WILL become safer than driving...be patient

[Cris]

I'll throw out one other point out for your consideration. In an effort to be more efficient with the company that did not want me flying my A/C I actually invited a couple of my direct reports to go along one day on one of my business trips. When we landed without issue I latter found out that one of the guys was litterally scared to death of small planes & did not know how to tell me. The next day as part of the presentation team he did a terrible job because all he could think about was having to get back into the plane. I sent him home commercially and later after we talked he felt he was compelled to go since he reported to me. There really are a great many things that concern an employer over and above the right to fly as an individual for your company.

[DaV8or]

Quote: Mazerbase

This may be a really silly question, BUT, here I go.  If commercial flying is "safer" than private GA, what are the stats on private GA flights with commercially rated pilots?  Does that mean we could substantially improve our stats by requiring a higher level of proficiency for a private license?  Does that mean I can improve my personal odds by getting a commercial license?  Do we KNOW the answers to this from documented stats?

[N601RX]

It's often much easier to get forgiviness than permission.

[thinwing]

I think if I had a business trip out of town and I had the choice of a 6hour drive,3hour airline(with ckeckin) or 1.5 hr flight in the mooney I owned...I would be really  bummed about the no fly ban.It really comes down to a quality of life issue...how much irritation or inconvenience one is willing to put up with.Seths company will never have an appreciation of the time savings(his ability to make 2 or 3 times the sales calls or business meetings )as opposed to the rather miniscule risk.Even at 1or 2 fatals per 100000 flying hours...actual risk is low...or too put into odds..how many eons would it take to win the lottery at those odds???I think it comes down to an intelligent assessment of risks vs an "expert" advising a company what an acceptible risk is.my 2 cents ,thank god the boss I answer to i see every day in the mirror and we are usually in agreement...kpc

[David Mazer]

At 12 fatalities per 1,000,000 miles, that means there is one fatality per 83,333 miles and, at 200 mph, a fatality every 417 flying hrs.  That seems very high.

[ChrisH]

Take a look at this article, I think the 1M mile crash stat is wrong. The data here is old, but generally still in the ballpark.

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety

Chris.

[aviatoreb]

Here is an interesting table I ran across last year of relative dangers, but before I show it, I will mention one of the weirdest stats I have seen. Did you know that world wide, on average 2 people per year die from coconuts falling on your head? Of course, I feel less at risk to this dangerous plight of the tropics since I live in upstate ny and we have very few coconut trees. Watch out if you live in Miami!! 

(I don't endorse the quality of the data in this table - I just cut and paste - but you get the idea).

Risks Which Increase Chance of Death by 0.000001 (1 in a million), followed by the cause of death. 

• Smoking 1.4 Cigarettes (Cancer, Heart Disease)
• Drinking ½ liter of wine (Cirrhosis of the liver)
• Spending 1 hour in a coal mine (Black Lung Disease)
• Spending 3 hours in a coal mine (Accident)
• Living 2 days in New York or Boston (Air Pollution)
• Traveling 6 Minutes by canoe (Accident)
• Traveling 10 miles by bicycle (Accident)
• Traveling 300 miles by car (Accident)
• Flying 1000 miles by jet (Accident)
• Flying 6000 miles by jet (Cancer caused by cosmic radiation)
• Living 2 months in Denver (Cancer caused by cosmic radiation)
• Living 3 months in average brick or stone building (Cancer caused by natural radioactivity)
• One chest x-ray taken in a good hospital (Cancer caused by radiation)
• Living 2 months with a cigarette smoker (Cancer, heart disease)
• Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter (Liver cancer caused by aflatoxin
• Drinking Miami drinking water for 1 year (Cancer caused by Chloroform)
• Drinking 30 12oz cans of diet soda (Cancer caused by saccharin)
• Living 5 years at the boundary of a typical nuclear power plant in the open (Cancer caused by radiation)
• Living 20 years near a PVC plant (Cancer caused by vinyl chloride)
• Living 150 years within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant (Cancer caused by radiation)
• Eating 100 Charcoal Broiled steaks (Cancer from benzopyrene)

The next time someone gives you a hard time about your airplane, give them hell for eating a steak or riding in one of those super dangerous canoes...they are way worse than small airplanes. Statistically that is. No joke.  People are less adverse to canoes but they are very dangerous.  I like canoes.