IS AVIATION SAFE ?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5127, 18 May 1927, Page 3

IS AVIATION SAFE ?

RECENT NEWS RAISES QUESTION.

MATTER OF HUMAN FALLIBILITY.

From time to time the question arises, “Is aviation safelt is prompted by some fatality. At the present time the exploit of. the two French airmen who set out to fly the Atlantic and of whose fate the gravest doubts are entertained, and the deaths of four members of the Australian Air Force and one civilian in a demonstration in honour of the Duke and Duchess of York, have placed the risks before the public. Since the news of aviation, consists almost entirely of assurances that it is as safe as motoring, and reports of ■horrible disasters, the lay mind is rather puzzled as to the position. The record of civilian aviation does not receive much publicity. During the first half of 1926 the aeroplanes of the German air combine, Lufthansa, flew 2,500,000 miles and carried 56,000 passengers without a fatality, ’ and it has been estimated, from the figures of the last three years, that the chances of a passenger in a German transport aeroplane reaching his destination safely are 99.997 per cent. In the American Mair Service, where greater risks are taken, the average of fatalities is about one for every one and a half million miles flown. The British Imperial Airways also have a remarkable record, having in the 21 months up to last October, carried 25,000 passengers without a fatal accident. To the question, “Is aviation safe ?” these figures supply the answer that it can be, and ought to be, safe. The aeroplane is no longer in the experimental stage, and given properly tested and equipped machines and properly trained pilots the air should be as safe a medium of travel as land or sea, provided we do not expect too ■much.

The trouble is that flying has appealed to men’s imaginations too much, and we have gentlemen like Mr H. G. Wells embittered against the whole business because it does not enable them to spend their weekends in Nagasaki or Buenos Ayres. To fly from Croydon to Paris is practicable and safe; to atttempt to fly from Paris to the'United States is still a gamble. The really disturbing aspect of flying to-day is the frequency of the disasters in military aviation, concerning which much is being said in America and on the Continent just now, and for which the authorities have not given very satisfactory explanations. It is interesting to note, however, that ninety per cent, of the accidents in the American Air Service have been ascribed to human fallibility, and that most experts there advocate far more rigid physical tests for. Air Force recruits. »