Accidents: Flying Physicians

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While forever warning their patients to shun unnecessary risks, doctors seem to jettison their own advice as soon as they take up flying. In 1964-65, reports the Federal Aviation Agency, 30 U.S. physician pilots died in crashes; in ten cases, the doctors' families died with them. As a result, flying doctors had a fatal-accident rate four times as high as the average for all other private pilots.

Major causes of the high death rate, report Dr. Stanley Mohler, a specialist in aviation medicine, and Psychologist Sheldon Freud, were "risk-taking attitudes and judgments." The two researchers were impressed by "the tendency of many of these physicians to fly at night in inclement weather over dangerous terrain, despite limited or no instrument-flight experience. In most of the weather accidents, the pilots had received official briefings concerning adverse weather, but decided to depart anyway."

In four cases, the doomed planes were known to have had mechanical deficiencies before takeoff. In others, doctors took off with their planes overloaded, or from an airport where the runway lights were not working. Almost all of the physicians were setting off on pleasure trips, so they did not have the excuse of "Got to get through for the patient's sake." The trouble, suggests an FAA official, is that too many doctors fly with "the feeling that they are omnipotent."