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Experienced pilots (e.g. those with over 10,000 hours) are more likely to have faced an emergency situation some time in their career, compared to a new pilot (with say 40 hours). My question is, how often can one expect to encounter an emergency situation (e.g. one every 5,000 hours) ?

Here, an emergency situation is defined as a situation where the use of a "Mayday" call is justified, for example engine failure (in single / multi engine aircrafts), loss of electronic instruments in the cockpit etc. Medical emergencies are not counted.

kevin
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    I feel your definition of an emergency might be too narrow. For example, once the catastrophe began to unfold on AF447, would you describe the situation as an emergency? – Daniele Procida Aug 12 '17 at 16:27
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    @DanieleProcida -- definitely -- loss of all reliable airspeed refs is a Mayday situation for sure – UnrecognizedFallingObject Aug 12 '17 at 17:01
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    If the FAA released raw data this would be easier to quantify but may be difficult in the current format. Somebody would have to go through all the incident/accident reports and record the hours of the crew. That is if a report was even filed, quite often "emergencies" that end without any remarkable outcome aren't reported, like engine failures in multi-engine aircraft. – Ron Beyer Aug 12 '17 at 17:51
  • What's the threshold for an "emergency?" As an example, one time I just told the tower the cabin filled with smoke, that I could not see very well, and I was shutting down everything except the LOC and GS receivers. The next time we talked was on a fireman's handheld. I never used the word "mayday," as there was no time. Also, I have lost several engines, one once with a FAA Ops Inspector on board, but never told anyone "mayday." – mongo Aug 13 '17 at 00:50
  • As far as I can remember, none of my situations met NTSB 830 reporting requirements, and generally, the only thing I filed were NASA ASRS forms. So it is not clear to me what database would accurately report what the OP is seeking. – mongo Aug 13 '17 at 00:54
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    On a minor point, note that if the aircraft needs two crew members, then the mean frequency for a pilot doubles (or the period is halved) without actual change in emergency event frequency. – mins Aug 13 '17 at 10:49
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    On the AF447 situation - it shouldn't have been an emergency. Loss of airspeed indication is supposed to be covered in A330 training: 85% power, 5 degrees nose up, and you hold a reliable cruising speed until the pitot tubes unfreeze. It was aircrew panicking and creating confusion in the cockpit that led to that disaster. – tj1000 Aug 13 '17 at 22:35
  • I am voting to close this question—as currently worded—as too broad. The scope of the question could be narrowed to a specific type of operation (e.g.: air carrier or airline ops) for which data may be available. As currently asked, the question invites inclusion of data from operations for which data is not available, such as pipeline patrol operations, and the question is therefore not answerable. – J W Aug 14 '17 at 13:53
  • Curiously, in some aircraft (notably some of them with more than two engines), an engine failure isn't even considered an emergency, but rather an abnormal. – Lnafziger Apr 02 '18 at 22:54
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    Please do NOT close this question. It is definitely answerable and the answer is going to be interesting. Hard to answer yes, off topic/not answerable NO! :-) The other big question site has an answer for this question :p – Caterpillaraoz Apr 03 '18 at 07:06
  • See "What is the difference between aviation “accident” and “incident”?" – jwzumwalt Apr 03 '18 at 21:21
  • You need to compile some data. I have never had to call Pan-Pan or Mayday-Mayday in 850+ hours of single engine flying. I think good maintenance and flight planning is a key factor in that. And no unlucky occurrences such as a bird strike. – CrossRoads Apr 04 '18 at 14:45

1 Answers1

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The answer is going to vary wildly according aircraft type, pilot rating and proficiency, number and type of engines, aircraft size, and part of the world.

In this 2016 study by the FAA for GA pilots, the median period of time for non instrument rated pilots was over 3 times as often as instrument rated. 250hrs vs 823hrs. The report describes some of the hardships involved in arriving at the less than precise determination.

I have asked this question to many airline pilots and about half of the 4000-6000hr pilots have a story to tell. Just guessing but I would say modern airliners are perhaps every 10,000 hours.

I must be doing something wrong, because I averaged about every 500-600hrs but then I was mostly flying very old run down Beech-18's in Alaska.

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jwzumwalt
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  • The fact that they were able to tell the stories is promising. I wonder what the statistics would be on pilot hours as a fatality rate, i.e. 1 fatality per 100,000 hours or something. – Cloud Jun 28 '18 at 14:06
  • Well, having an instrument rating gives you options beyond what you have without one. VFR into IMC? Without an instrument rating, losing all external references is absolutely an emergency. With an instrument rating, you can (not saying it's always the best thing to do) just call up ATC, inform them of the situation, and switch to IFR. Alternatively, you can switch to instrument references only and go back the way you came without significantly endangering the safety of the flight. So it's not particularly surprising that a non-IR pilot would call mayday more often than an IR pilot, on average. – user Aug 20 '19 at 14:47