Posted for "terrence o'neill" <troneill@charter.net>:

 Dom,
    What you say is true, but pilot attitude and capability isn't the whole
story.
    Airplanes are designed imperfectly, re safety.  Some more imperfectly than
others.
    Except where the entrepreneur manages to keep control of the design until
it si built and tested ... like Lance, airplanes are designed by the guys with
financial control, and in companies this means the boards of directors go for
the bottom line, and that shifts control to the marketing departments.
    Even then, very few folks who get authorized to start with a clean sheet,
have the broad mastery of aerodynamics and structures needed to create
breakthroughs.  Think Jack Northrop and Kelly Johnson.  As a result we have
for some time had a long dry period of super-refining to 'new and improved',
rather than breakthroughs.  Only after 50 years is Boeing considering a
configuration breakthrough with great improvements in performance and
efficiency ... the blended wing-body.  Northrop offered it in 1949.
 
    The point being belabored is that our airplanes themselves are not as safe
as they could have been sixty years ago if we had changed our attitude and
demanded/FAA encouraged: that all fuel be ejectable, greater positive pitching
moments throughout the AOA range by bigger tails so that stalls coujld not be
maintainable (and therefore spin-proof), ballistic-chutes and mufflers
required.  One big contributor to this probelm of improvement is the FAA's
legalistic autonomy, which penalizes the improvers by making them pay for
explaining and persuading it to the workers in the FAA regional office, who
are nervous about approving anything unproven', thereby preempting the torts
courts. Even though the FAA employs more lawyers than there are pilots in
flight.
    In a sentence, our planes are okay, but could be much better ... so we
shouldn't blame the poor human being who did not really wan t to kill himself.
 I don't think we should respond to tragedy by saying 'we'll try harder'.  I
think that instead we should  ffankly, honestly admit there are flaws where
they exist and take action to modify them.
    Not so easy to do ... like, probably 95 out of 100 pilots don't understand
that a wing (and tail) stalls at an ANGLE.  Not at a 'speed'. AOAs should be a
required basic instrujment on every airPLANE ... that flys by angling it's
wing to the relative wind... something that apparently puzzles FAA policy
authorities.
    I think pilots are good enough already.
    I think BFRs are completely unnecessary and it has been proven so in a
study, and the cost deters new and licensed pilots from continuing to fly.
    I think medicals are unnecessary because they aren't requjired for driving
a car.
    I think we need more common sense, and less gullability to governmental
and airlines and military PR that lies about a crowded sky.
    It makes me sad to look up at the sky and see no airplanes.
    So I go to my hangar and look at the one that isn't quite ready to get up
there yet.
 : )I yield the remainder of my time to anyone with an opinion, rather than a
'feeling'.
 
 Terrence (aka Redhand)
 N211AL L235/320
 99.9%