Aviation Sport Safety Comparison - Gliding Specifically

[artik]

From what I know gliding is considered as one of the safest aviation sports... There is almost nothing can go wrong - no engine, no fuel, etc. And indeed, at least according to Israeli statistics there was only one fatal incident in recent years and it according to Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) report (Israeli NTSB that performs investigation on aviation sport incidents as well) it was most likely suicide.

When I look onto CAA reports there almost no reports on incidents and these that are reported are mostly minor. On the other hand if I look on other sports like Paragliding, Ultralight or Powered parachute, there are many incidents and there are fatal ones time to time. Ultralight for example looks very dangerous as you mostly fly at ~500 feet above ground so you have very minimal reaction time.

However, without normalization to flight hours or other measurements it is almost impossible to claim that gliding is one of the safest sports...

Can somebody point to some official data that provides normalized safety records according to different types of aviation so I can compare it for example with general aviation and with different aviation sports as well?

Thanks!

[jigsaw]

I don't know of anyone having pre crunched the numbers you're asking for. The closest thing I've seen would've been when AOPA broke down accidents by level of pilot rating (private vfr, private ifr, commercial, atp, etc) and that was so long ago it's very out of date.

If you're inclined, you could go to the NTSB database and crunch the numbers yourself.

Really I don't see gliding as being any more or less safe than other types of aviation. With proper training and decision making the only thing you really can't recover from in either case is a catastrophic airframe failure (wing comes off) or a mid air collision.  Those can happen just as easily in a glider as something with an engine.

[deSelys]

Gliders are often flying in close proximity of each others when thermalling and that should influence negatively the rate of accidents. However, the mandatory parachute probably helps to lower the rate of fatalities.

[cpxxx]

I doubt if that information is available. But even if it was I doubt you could still prove gliding is the safest aerosport on the basis of even normalised statistics. Anecdotedly it is clearly one of the safest means of flying. But gliding is rather unique even within the gliding sphere. First off it's a niche activity, it's mature in terms of technology and practice. It even predates powered flying and by it's nature tends to be a club based, fair weather activity that rarely strays far from the home airfield and unless you catch a mountain wave you won't be in the air for very long so logged hours are minimal. Gliders can fly slowly and effectively land almost anywhere safely. If all flying was like that the safety levels would increase exponentially.