Hi Hasben

yes I fly small planes only, with engines and without, and flew many years in the gliding national team and in competitions. For worst case I still prefer to wear a parachute on my back and prefer to rely on glide angle instead of trusting the engine completely to make a safe landing.

There seem still to be airline pilots around who can land a plane in a worst case scenarios, but by shortening their training and with all this fly by wire technology it's getting more difficult.

But simple rules can safe life and give time to solve a problem: Switch off the auto pilot and fly 70% thrust and and angle of attack of 4 degrees - that works for most planes even with iced airspeed sensors.

But if primary structures fail - then your only hope of survival is minimum height and a parachute - or in an airline - prayers.

Great stuff chris, I always wanted to do some gliding, it must be the purest form of flying. Somehow life & other things to do, always got in the way.

I also felt totally safe with a parachute, & 8000 feet of air under me, I reckoned I could handle any thing that went wrong with those conditions.

Then they took us down to the parachute packing space, to see it done, & give us confidence. After that I couldn't believe that they would ever open.

One question chris.

Do you know why they are not using inertial navigation systems, or GPS systems, rather than a pitot tube, that can ice up, or be otherwise blocked?

From what we see on crash evaluations, on TV, pitot tubes do have troubles, & todays aircraft depend so much on these inputs.

Dear Hasbeen,

I think I'll be travelling by car from now on as well.
Older cars - love them. What's your favourite?

Dear Hasbeen,
you cannot replace pitot tubes with INS or GPS systems. These give you only position and speed over ground can be calculated from it. This leaves wind speed unconsidered.
Pneumatic instruments to indicate horizontal, vertical speed and altitude are primary instruments and still compulsory in any cockpit.

Spike Milligan of course summed it up quite correctly.

Flying is perfectly safe, its crashing that can be dangerous :)

Enjoy Perth Ludwig, its a great little spot on the planet,
fortunately many arn't aware of it.