You know those little tiny planes that people like to fly for fun and some people take as air taxis? I have a friend who flies one of those itty bitty planes and keeps offering to take me out on a ride one day. I constantly demur, because, well, tragedies like this happen. As you’ve probably heard, Travis Barker and DJ AM are in critical condition, and are expected to make a full recovery, but their friends, including Chris “Little Chris” Baker, 29, of Studio City, Calif.; and Charles Still, 25, of Los Angeles, Calif. both passed away (along with the two pilots.)
While the risk of commercial airline crashes are still smaller than automobile crashes at 1 in 11 million, vs 1 in 5000 driving, private plane crashes seem to happen all the time. That’s because they are statistically more likely to happen. If you think about the most famous deaths related to airplane crashes, they are all in small planes: John F. Kennedy Jr., Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Denver, Randy Rhoads, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, “The Big Bopper,” all died in small plane crashes. Sometimes they were the pilots.
Small planes crashes are more frequent in part because of an inability to counter electromagnetic surges; they are more vulnerable to a faltering GPS system; weather can upset a smaller, lighter plane more easily, whereas a monstrous Boeing 747 can weather the weather. And there’s always pilot error to consider: small planes are more likely to be flown by hobbyists; you can’t just whisk off to a nearby state for a day in a 747.
I asked my pilot friend, Bryan Keith, who flies small planes as a hobby, about small plane crashes. Of the Barker/AM crash he says: He says, “Most pilots are always pissed about the bum rap that general aviation gets. Mainstream news stories about plane crashes are almost always sensational and factually inaccurate.” He explained that we have Small Plane Bias and tried to set the record straight.