Comments on: Why are aircraft safer than yachts?

By: Bruce R

Bruce R — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:15:23 +0000

The author is comparing Airliners with private yachts. Airliners are more comparable to ocean-liners carrying thousands of souls. Private yachts are comparable to General Aviation aircraft. And the comparison is much closer. Most General Aviation aircraft are using 75 year old technology in their engines, (ie. Carburetors and Magnetos). And if you compared the failure and accident statistics of General Aviation (Privately owned aircraft) with privately owned Yachts, I would say that the Yachts are much safer.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:20:57 +0000

boats float in a corrosive soup of salt water, put an airplane or a car anywhere near it and it will rapidly become very unreliable.

cheers

Ben

By: Why are aircraft safer than yachts? | Sailing and Yachting

Why are aircraft safer than yachts? | Sailing and Yachting — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 10:43:46 +0000

[…] reading here: Why are aircraft safer than yachts? Posted in General Tags: aircraft, design, does-seem, engineering, expect-planes, flying-at-100, […]

By: total

total — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:35:01 +0000

While aircraft do have to maintain higher standards, you are speaking as an engineer. As McCoy said on Star Trek The Movie…”engineers love to change things”. Well, I’ve flown a few times, but I would rather be on a sinking ship, than crash in an aircraft at 36,000 feet. Unrealistic you say,….maybe. But at least I’m on the surface, even if it’s water. I don’t like flying, never have, never will. It’s a means to an end. If men were meant to fly, we’d be born with wings. Oops, I guess that applies to pigs as well.

By: Stef

Stef — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 08:01:37 +0000

Boat engines need looking at, for example, in our launch we have a certain brand, it is basically a 200hp, but beefed up with a turbo and a super charger, so we have 260hp.Trouble is, the add-ons are still only suitable for a 200hp, so constantly fall over. We also found that hydraulic rams fitted, were originally for air craft use, so the salt water environment wrecked them. asically, because as you say, there is no minimum standard and no come back for most boaties, as their boats are used infrequently, the designers get away with telling the owner, their maintenance regime has been shonky or they have just been rough on it.
We are told our stern leg needs replacing every 1000 hours and thats BS, we do a 1000hrs a year and who would buy one every year? We don’t, we don’t use the manufacturers recommended oil, or we would be replacing it, we use another sternleg oil and get plus 3000 hrs, then a reco.
Boat engines can cost $80,000.00 or so. so why do they often only last a few 1000 hrs or a short number of years? We could buy a nice vehicle each for that money, each with an engine in it that will last for years and many 1000’s of hours.
Yes, boaties are ripped off by the manufacturers who rely totally, on the intermittent use and often frequent change of owners to hide the shortcomings of their product.
Good article, enjoyed reading it and look forward to the day we can expect reliability in marine parts and equipment.

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 11:00:28 +0000

Thats a fair point you’ve made there but planes carry hundreds of people, dont have liferafts or backup measures if they go down they generally kill everyone on board. at least if a yacht sinks you have some time to get away or fix it and you dont hit the water at 600mph!

great article though.