Got my Fall 2008 issue of RPA's Red Alert Magazine today.
I enjoyed reading Alan Cockrell's extensive review of Safety starting on
page 11.
A few comments from my experience on the insurance side:
1) The graph of Total Mishaps on page 11 is daunting: 73 Yak accidents and
26 Nanchangs.
Yak 55, Yak 54 (Competition and Airshow), Yak 3, 7, 9 and 11 (Fighter)
aircraft are included in that 73 total.
The numbers look quite a bit different if you exclude those significantly
different airplanes and operations.
Removing the Airshow for Hire aircraft, along with the Fighters presents a
more meaningful comparison.
Insurance is obviously handled differently for Airshow and big Fighter
airplanes for just this reason.
2) NTSB type statistics unfortunately do not include A LOT of accidents
that never get reported.
Some involve completely destroyed aircraft, some are minor mishaps.
The insurance claims people may or may not get involved in all of these.
3) I noticed a few accidents got double reported.
2 airplanes in a taxi mishap each get an NTSB record that might tend to over
report the history as 2 versus 1 mishap.
4) Jammed Elevators - Way to go RPA! Really turned that situation around.
In fact, why don't we all make a plan to shine a light in the tail cone this
very week and do a "FOD-Check".
5) Landing Gear continues to be the #1 source of damage to RPA type
aircraft.
My Yak has a Landing Gear Warning Buzzer (blares in the intercom)... does
yours? It only cost me a couple hundred bucks.
Yes it goes off once in a while in formation as I retard the power to idle,
but usually only when climbing out with a Cj... :)
Thanks Alan for taking the time to collect all of this data.
Tj
---------------------------
Thomas Johnson, Airpower Insurance, LLC
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