« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »
April 20, 2007
General Aviation Safety
I wanted to know how dangerous the type of flying Rebecca and I might be interested in is. I'm speaking of General Aviation, specifically light, small aircraft, on a recreational or hobby basis. These stats exclude commercial airline flight. A lot of the general population "feels" like being a private pilot is very dangerous. I wanted to know as objectively as possible how dangerous it really is. I would consider my observations below to be good within +/- 20%. This data is based on the Nall report and my own calculations. It's significant to me, but others should not cite this data as I only pulled it together in under an hour. In 2006:
1 accident in every 14,000 hours of flying
1 fatal accident in every 71,000 hours of flying (a little less than 2 people die per fatal accident)
An average non-commercial pilot flies less than 40 hours per year.
The highest category of fatal accidents is poor pilot judgment: low-flying (buzzing) and attempting higher risk maneuvers.
Student pilots are the safest category of pilot, followed by airline pilots. The most dangerous, although still acceptably safe to me, are your first 500 hours of flight after being a student. This would be reduced with two pilots in the aircraft at one time (pat of the reason Rebecca and I are interested together).
Comparatively speaking, estimates place general aviation flying as about 20 times more dangerous per hour spent operating the plane/car, and 5 times more dangerous per mile traveled. In contrast, airline flight is less dangerous per mile than driving.
As for risk per person who decides to fly vs. per person who decides to drive, insurance premiums might be a worthy measure. Insurance on a four-seat plane is about the same as insurance on a mid-priced SUV. This stat also emphasizes how aviation is more dangerous per hour, but somewhere more equivalent on a "per person who decides to do each activity" basis.
Posted by Jeff at 09:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 17, 2007
Consulting from a Campsite
This may be one of the stranger blog posts I ever write. I'm in Lakeland, Florida, in a pup tent (thanks mom and dad - first use is going great). I am not on vacation. My client is based here. While I normally stay at the Marriott, this week Lakeland is the site of the second largest annual aviation fly-in event (second to Oshkosh, Wisconsin). The event is called Sun-n-Fun, and is Lakeland's only real claim to fame. Lakeland is about 40 minutes outside Tampa, half way between Tampa and Orlando. This project is only a few months long and just happened to fall across the week of Sun-n-Fun. So I'm camping here among the plane-tent pairs and the RVs, rental car parked next to my tent. This may be the greatest cost saving measure I've ever done for a client, although cost-cutting is not at all a reason I'm doing this. I'm here to see the planes, booth, and airshows! Rebecca and I have both wanted to get into private (light aircraft) aviation, so I couldn't pass up this opportunity. Besides the fact that she gets hardly any days off, she can't come because this weekend is her big Read-a-Thon she organized to benefit John Wood's Room to Read organization.
A little snafu with registration meant I had to be inventive to secure my camping spot for tonight. Tomorrow morning will be the real test. There are very primitive showers here with no real changing area. I only brought a 1.5 x 1.5 foot backpacking towel. Lucky Lakeland. And my sleeping bag is pink, so I'm tryig to hide it from people.
Posted by Jeff at 06:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2007
Pakalolo Takes Mike Simanek Again
Whistler was fantastic this year. While I will be sure to post more pictures later, I had to share this gem from the bravest idiot on the so-called "10 Percent Ski Trip", my dear friend Mike Simanek.
Background: Two days prior Mike Simanek and John Hebda had fallen on Pakalolo, a 45-50 degree double black on Blackcomb. They fell independently, but during their slide the length of a football field, they somehow latched onto each other, clutching like schoolgirls. (OK, not really, but I wanted to say "schoolgirls".)
On Sunday Mike tried Pakalolo one more time - Simanek's Revenge, if you will. Unfortunately his fate was repeated but included the special bonus of a collision with a sapling.
Posted by Jeff at 11:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 10, 2007
Graduate School Decisions - We're Headed to Boston!
&
This fall Jeff will be attending the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Rebecca will be attending the Harvard Graduate School of Education, School Leadership program.
It feels like so much of the last eight months has been preparring for this moment; hobbies have been put on hold, family vacations skipped, weekends spent visiting schools. It's just good to know our fate and be able to start planning for the next two years of life as students.
There is a fair amount of dissapointment I feel about being declined from Stanford. It's an exercise in mental self-discipline to face up to rejection, to consider correctly how much control I had over my candidacy, to stop myself from the ugly practice of brainstorming excuses but at the same time not be too hard on myself. I told everyone to be realistic about my chances at a school that will admit 8 or 9% this year, and about the self-filtering mechanisms built into an applicant pool that willingly faces those odds. Where this blog is a personal diary, I want to remember my disappointment in a personal goal not realized that I held for years. Where this blog is a way of communicating with friends and family, I want people to know that I'm very proud of the candidacy I put forth (it represented an incredible study-of-self experience), and I'm very excited about MIT.
Why I'm excited about MIT: Consistent top 10 program. Always fourth or fifth most selective business school. Known for entrepreneurial specialties and the business plan competition. Lots of prominent faculty. Only b-school where Jack Welch teaches a course. Benefits from proximity to world's #1 engineering, economics, and finance programs. Tied for highest median salary after graduation. HBS and MIT Sloan courses are cross-listed, meaning I could take some HBS courses. Notable alumns include Kofi Annan, Mitch Kapor, and Carly Fiorina. I was also admitted to the Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, a program to develop entrepreneurs for emerging technology startups. The program includes a special dinner seminar, specific courses, and a trip to Silicon Valley.
Rebecca's School Leadership program is an intense one year program which will provide her with principal licensure that is reciprocal to most states. Harvard is consistently ranked in the top 3 graduate programs in education, as well as for school administration and education policy which are her main interests. Harvard has a notable strength in nontraditional school development such as charter schools.
We're looking forward to moving (once a year for six years now) and being totally broke again. :)
Posted by Jeff at 03:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 05, 2007
Funny Spirituality
01777908 0177792244
This string of numbers will be google-able in a few days, I'm sure. "This is the code. Repeat it yourself, it has tremendous power."
I cannot wait until someone makes a YTMND out of this.
Posted by Jeff at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack