<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>eschneider</author><text>GA is as safe as you want to make it for yourself. Most accidents happen because people are in a hurry to get where they&amp;#x27;re going, so they force an uncertain situation into a bad one. Police heli and medivac are motivated to fly where that would be &amp;#x27;unwise&amp;#x27; because people might get hurt otherwise. It runs up the numbers. :&amp;#x2F;</text><parent_chain><item><author>tialaramex</author><text>And when you say &amp;quot;Aviation is safe&amp;quot; you mean specifically Scheduled Aviation ie people buy tickets and go on a plane with some guys they&amp;#x27;ve never met flying it. Scheduled Aviation is remarkably safe.&lt;p&gt;GA (General aviation, people who own a little plane and maybe just fly it for fun, or it&amp;#x27;s a professional expense for say a plastic surgeon and allows them to fly 300 miles home on Thursday evening after working four days in the big city) is not safe. A few hundred of these people die, not just smash up their planes or get hurt, but die, sometimes with family or friends aboard, every year. It might make the local TV news, at most. Unless they were a celebrity it won&amp;#x27;t make national news.&lt;p&gt;Commercial is more complicated because there are so many possibilities. Cargo is pretty safe, if your job is to move boxes of stuff from one big jet airport to another in a civilized country you&amp;#x27;ll likely die in bed of old age. But if you fly a police helicopter, or medevac, or you&amp;#x27;re a crop duster, or you fly custom pick up jobs, when the client wants and where they want - those jobs can go badly wrong much too easily, without you really understanding what you&amp;#x27;ve got yourself into until it&amp;#x27;s too late. These people are (or at least should be) better trained than in GA, but they&amp;#x27;re also often flying more demanding missions. You may operate out of somewhere with not-so-great capabilities, on short notice, in poor weather and&amp;#x2F;or at night, and you may be expected to go places that you ordinarily wouldn&amp;#x27;t, close to buildings, close to other aircraft, even close to the ground - all of which narrows your options if things go wrong.&lt;p&gt;Military is also pretty bad as I understand it. It needn&amp;#x27;t be, but there&amp;#x27;s some sense that the job is &amp;quot;supposed&amp;quot; to be dangerous, which maybe makes sense for front line infantry, but really not for the vast majority of military pilots - way too many of them die far from any enemy, as a result of somebody screwing up, just like in GA or commercial.</text></item><item><author>kube-system</author><text>Aviation is not safe because of luck or because aerospace engineers build infallible machines.  Aviation is safe because of a culture of safety that puts the right procedures in place to mitigate problems that will eventually happen.</text></item><item><author>bombcar</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;@REALATCchannel&amp;#x2F;videos&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;@REALATCchannel&amp;#x2F;videos&lt;/a&gt; made me realize just how many incidents happen and are resolved without issue.</text></item><item><author>devoutsalsa</author><text>This isn&amp;#x27;t common, but it&amp;#x27;s pretty routine.  Pilots are trained for this, and the aircraft are designed to handle the stress.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear</title><url>https://www.wbtv.com/2023/06/28/plane-lands-charlotte-douglas-international-airport-after-dealing-with-mechanical-issues/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>devoutsalsa</author><text>I used to sell life insurance.  &amp;quot;Minor&amp;quot; health problems would result in a slightly higher rate: higher than average blood pressure, asthma, thyroid issues, etc.  Serious health problems like diabetes, cancer, smoking, and so on meant much higher premiums, especially when combined.  If you were a private pilot, they wouldn&amp;#x27;t even give you insurance (most of the time) unless you agreed to be covered in all cases except flying.  It&amp;#x27;s called an aviation exclusion rider.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sec.gov&amp;#x2F;Archives&amp;#x2F;edgar&amp;#x2F;data&amp;#x2F;791683&amp;#x2F;000079168303000003&amp;#x2F;exd6.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sec.gov&amp;#x2F;Archives&amp;#x2F;edgar&amp;#x2F;data&amp;#x2F;791683&amp;#x2F;0000791683030...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>tialaramex</author><text>And when you say &amp;quot;Aviation is safe&amp;quot; you mean specifically Scheduled Aviation ie people buy tickets and go on a plane with some guys they&amp;#x27;ve never met flying it. Scheduled Aviation is remarkably safe.&lt;p&gt;GA (General aviation, people who own a little plane and maybe just fly it for fun, or it&amp;#x27;s a professional expense for say a plastic surgeon and allows them to fly 300 miles home on Thursday evening after working four days in the big city) is not safe. A few hundred of these people die, not just smash up their planes or get hurt, but die, sometimes with family or friends aboard, every year. It might make the local TV news, at most. Unless they were a celebrity it won&amp;#x27;t make national news.&lt;p&gt;Commercial is more complicated because there are so many possibilities. Cargo is pretty safe, if your job is to move boxes of stuff from one big jet airport to another in a civilized country you&amp;#x27;ll likely die in bed of old age. But if you fly a police helicopter, or medevac, or you&amp;#x27;re a crop duster, or you fly custom pick up jobs, when the client wants and where they want - those jobs can go badly wrong much too easily, without you really understanding what you&amp;#x27;ve got yourself into until it&amp;#x27;s too late. These people are (or at least should be) better trained than in GA, but they&amp;#x27;re also often flying more demanding missions. You may operate out of somewhere with not-so-great capabilities, on short notice, in poor weather and&amp;#x2F;or at night, and you may be expected to go places that you ordinarily wouldn&amp;#x27;t, close to buildings, close to other aircraft, even close to the ground - all of which narrows your options if things go wrong.&lt;p&gt;Military is also pretty bad as I understand it. It needn&amp;#x27;t be, but there&amp;#x27;s some sense that the job is &amp;quot;supposed&amp;quot; to be dangerous, which maybe makes sense for front line infantry, but really not for the vast majority of military pilots - way too many of them die far from any enemy, as a result of somebody screwing up, just like in GA or commercial.</text></item><item><author>kube-system</author><text>Aviation is not safe because of luck or because aerospace engineers build infallible machines.  Aviation is safe because of a culture of safety that puts the right procedures in place to mitigate problems that will eventually happen.</text></item><item><author>bombcar</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;@REALATCchannel&amp;#x2F;videos&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;@REALATCchannel&amp;#x2F;videos&lt;/a&gt; made me realize just how many incidents happen and are resolved without issue.</text></item><item><author>devoutsalsa</author><text>This isn&amp;#x27;t common, but it&amp;#x27;s pretty routine.  Pilots are trained for this, and the aircraft are designed to handle the stress.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear</title><url>https://www.wbtv.com/2023/06/28/plane-lands-charlotte-douglas-international-airport-after-dealing-with-mechanical-issues/</url></story>