Found a well-written rebuttal to a recent article covered elsewhere on VAF, EAA, and AOPA; the snip below is provided because it changed how I think about, talk about, and ultimately manage risk. YMMV.
"Stupid Pilot Tricks
Formal accident investigations claim that pilot error is responsible for 86 percent of all accidents. We in the aviation community know that this number is low; pilot error is a bigger contributor than that. The accidents included in the 86 percent usually involve some obvious mistake like low altitude aerobatics ("hey, Mom, watch this"), flying into severe weather, flying when ill or tired, or taking off with more weight than the airplane is designed to handle. But pilot error is deeper than that. Aircraft are complex machines that require careful, constant and expensive maintenance. If time or money are constraints, and they often are, and anything about maintenance is neglected, that too is pilot error. So too we see pilot error when in the face of a mechanical failure a pilot fails to land safely as a consequence of poor training. Yes, some failures are catastrophic and unrecoverable; but many can be survived if a pilot is properly equipped to handle the emergency. Failure to do so in a recoverable situation is pilot error...
?... Yes, we will continue to strive to reduce the risk of flying through proper pilot training, vigilant aircraft maintenance and good manufacturing practices; but the risk will never be zero. People will die flying, as they will when driving, skiing, mountain climbing, boating, diving, and walking to work...
?We can start by first breaking down the concept of risk into two main categories, inherent and operational...
?Flying creates an inherent risk; going further, we can say that flying is inherently dangerous. Think of the guy in a helmet watching TV in his living room as a comparison. Defying gravity at high speed will always entail risk inherent to the activity. But we're sold on the inverse of this reality, told that flying is inherently safe. It is not; we only create that illusion by successfully minimizing the risk with appropriate diligence. This inverse reality impacts how we perceive aircraft accidents. Even when we attribute the cause to pilot error, the assumption is usually that the pilot was doing something inherently safe, and then crashed by taking an unsafe action. But that is not true. Instead, the pilot was doing something inherently risky, and failed to manage the risk properly. Those two explanations of the accident are not equivalent. Which brings us now to operational risk.
?Operational risk is that caused by our own decisions and actions in pursuit of a goal or objective. We willingly take on operational risks by measuring the anticipated consequences of our actions against potential gains. We can choose to take an action that is more dangerous than not taking that action. I might risk a slip on ice if I were walking to an important meeting, but avoid that risk if I had simply intended to go snag a cup of Joe. We have a much greater degree of control over operational risks. Unlike with inherent risk, here our decisions and actions are the direct cause of any grief we may experience.
?Operational risks represent the greatest threat to safety in aviation; not defective manufacturing. We face these threats on every flight in every condition at every airport. Our decision-making itself is what creates the risk. As an aside, I should note too that general aviation pilots are exposed to a greater degree of operational risks than commercial pilots. For example, we have no duty-cycle limitations. That freedom places on us a greater potential for higher operational risk because we are allowed to make dumb choices not available to airlines. The most obvious operational risk is weather avoidance; but also included in this are our decisions about proper maintenance, currency, quality of training and a host of other factors...
?Managing Does Not Mean Eliminating
... risk management does not mean in the real world eliminating risk although the two are commonly confused. Rather the idea is to recognize risk, reduce potential risk to the greatest extent reasonably possible, and mitigate that which cannot be avoided. We have an obligation to make flying as safe as humanly possible. But "as safe as humanly possible" does not mean risk-free.
Flying is inherently dangerous; we cannot eliminate all aspects of operational risk; and no form of risk management is perfect. What that means: people are going to die flying airplanes. An accident does not automatically mean someone did something wrong. An accident can simply be the manifestation of flying's inherent risk, even if everybody did everything right. You do not believe me? A large bird strikes and severely damages the propeller of a single-engine airplane flying between Greenland and Iceland. No matter the level of training, maintenance, planning, and pilot skill that brought the aircraft to this moment, the fatal outcome of that strike is inevitable. And nobody is to blame; only the inherent risk of flying.
"Stuff" happens.
Let us never confuse risk management with risk elimination; the two are entirely different animals. Let us do everything within our power to improve safety. But we must acknowledge that in spite of those efforts, we will never eradicate the dangers inherent to flying. From every accident we must learn all that is possible. But not every accident is an indictment of aviation's training, safety and maintenance programs, nor necessarily reflective of poor pilot skill or judgment, nor indicative of a conspiracy of manufacturers to sell us faulty parts... Flying is relatively safe because we have made it so by managing inherent risk and minimizing operational risk...?
"Stupid Pilot Tricks
Formal accident investigations claim that pilot error is responsible for 86 percent of all accidents. We in the aviation community know that this number is low; pilot error is a bigger contributor than that. The accidents included in the 86 percent usually involve some obvious mistake like low altitude aerobatics ("hey, Mom, watch this"), flying into severe weather, flying when ill or tired, or taking off with more weight than the airplane is designed to handle. But pilot error is deeper than that. Aircraft are complex machines that require careful, constant and expensive maintenance. If time or money are constraints, and they often are, and anything about maintenance is neglected, that too is pilot error. So too we see pilot error when in the face of a mechanical failure a pilot fails to land safely as a consequence of poor training. Yes, some failures are catastrophic and unrecoverable; but many can be survived if a pilot is properly equipped to handle the emergency. Failure to do so in a recoverable situation is pilot error...
?... Yes, we will continue to strive to reduce the risk of flying through proper pilot training, vigilant aircraft maintenance and good manufacturing practices; but the risk will never be zero. People will die flying, as they will when driving, skiing, mountain climbing, boating, diving, and walking to work...
?We can start by first breaking down the concept of risk into two main categories, inherent and operational...
?Flying creates an inherent risk; going further, we can say that flying is inherently dangerous. Think of the guy in a helmet watching TV in his living room as a comparison. Defying gravity at high speed will always entail risk inherent to the activity. But we're sold on the inverse of this reality, told that flying is inherently safe. It is not; we only create that illusion by successfully minimizing the risk with appropriate diligence. This inverse reality impacts how we perceive aircraft accidents. Even when we attribute the cause to pilot error, the assumption is usually that the pilot was doing something inherently safe, and then crashed by taking an unsafe action. But that is not true. Instead, the pilot was doing something inherently risky, and failed to manage the risk properly. Those two explanations of the accident are not equivalent. Which brings us now to operational risk.
?Operational risk is that caused by our own decisions and actions in pursuit of a goal or objective. We willingly take on operational risks by measuring the anticipated consequences of our actions against potential gains. We can choose to take an action that is more dangerous than not taking that action. I might risk a slip on ice if I were walking to an important meeting, but avoid that risk if I had simply intended to go snag a cup of Joe. We have a much greater degree of control over operational risks. Unlike with inherent risk, here our decisions and actions are the direct cause of any grief we may experience.
?Operational risks represent the greatest threat to safety in aviation; not defective manufacturing. We face these threats on every flight in every condition at every airport. Our decision-making itself is what creates the risk. As an aside, I should note too that general aviation pilots are exposed to a greater degree of operational risks than commercial pilots. For example, we have no duty-cycle limitations. That freedom places on us a greater potential for higher operational risk because we are allowed to make dumb choices not available to airlines. The most obvious operational risk is weather avoidance; but also included in this are our decisions about proper maintenance, currency, quality of training and a host of other factors...
?Managing Does Not Mean Eliminating
... risk management does not mean in the real world eliminating risk although the two are commonly confused. Rather the idea is to recognize risk, reduce potential risk to the greatest extent reasonably possible, and mitigate that which cannot be avoided. We have an obligation to make flying as safe as humanly possible. But "as safe as humanly possible" does not mean risk-free.
Flying is inherently dangerous; we cannot eliminate all aspects of operational risk; and no form of risk management is perfect. What that means: people are going to die flying airplanes. An accident does not automatically mean someone did something wrong. An accident can simply be the manifestation of flying's inherent risk, even if everybody did everything right. You do not believe me? A large bird strikes and severely damages the propeller of a single-engine airplane flying between Greenland and Iceland. No matter the level of training, maintenance, planning, and pilot skill that brought the aircraft to this moment, the fatal outcome of that strike is inevitable. And nobody is to blame; only the inherent risk of flying.
"Stuff" happens.
Let us never confuse risk management with risk elimination; the two are entirely different animals. Let us do everything within our power to improve safety. But we must acknowledge that in spite of those efforts, we will never eradicate the dangers inherent to flying. From every accident we must learn all that is possible. But not every accident is an indictment of aviation's training, safety and maintenance programs, nor necessarily reflective of poor pilot skill or judgment, nor indicative of a conspiracy of manufacturers to sell us faulty parts... Flying is relatively safe because we have made it so by managing inherent risk and minimizing operational risk...?
