Product Description

You can fly through the zone. Or you can die in it. Most pilots earn their private certificate with 40 to 70 flight hours. Then they leave their instructors behind and enter the killing zone. Grimly embracing the period from 50 to 350 flight hours - a vital time for new pilots to build practical and decision-making skills - this deadly zone lays in wait for those who err, killing more pilots than all other periods put together. You don't have to be one of them.Aviation safety specialist Paul Craig - discoverer of the killing zone - shows you the fatal errors that inexperienced pilots make time after time and gives you tactics to avoid them. Based on the first in-depth, scientific study of pilot behavior and general aviation flying accidents in more than 20 years, "The Killing Zone": identifies the time frame in which you are most likely to die; alerts you to the 12 mistakes most likely to kill you; outlines preventive strategies for flying through the zone alive; provides guidelines for avoiding, evading, diverting, correcting, and managing dangers; and, includes a "Pilot Personality Self-Assessment Exercise" for an individualized survival strategy and survive the dangers that lurk in the killing zone.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137104 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
You can fly through the zone. Or you can die in it. Most pilots earn their private certificate with 40 to 70 flight hours. Then they leave their instructors behind and enter the killing zone. Grimly embracing the period from 50 to 350 flight hours--a vital time for new pilots to build practical and decision-making skills--this deadly zone lays in wait for those who err, killing more pilots than all other periods put together. You don't have to be one of them. Aviation safety specialist Paul Craig--discoverer of the killing zone--shows you the fatal errors that inexperienced pilots make time after time and gives you tactics to avoid them. Based on the first in-depth, scientific study of pilot behavior and general aviation flying accidents in more than 20 years, The Killing Zone:

*Identifies the time frame in which you are most likely to die

*Alerts you to the 12 mistakes most likely to kill you

*Outlines preventive strategies for flying through the zone alive

*Provides guidelines for avoiding, evading, diverting, correcting, and managing dangers

*Includes a "Pilot Personality Self-Assessment Exercise" for an individualized survival strategy

Survive the dangers that lurk in the killing zone.

About the Author
Paul A. Craig, Ed.D., longtime pilot, FAA award-winning flight instructor, and aviation educator and author, designed and conducted the research described in this book based on his lifelong concern with the high accident rate among general aviation pilots, and in the process of earning his doctorate in education, with special empahsis on pilot decision-making and flight training. A Gold Seal Multiengine Flight Instructor and twice FAA District Flight Instructor of the Year, he has spoken widely to flight instructors and others on improving flight training and safety. He is the author of Be a Better Pilot; Stalls & Spins; Multiengine Flying, 2nd Edition; and Light Airplane Navigation Essentials, all from McGraw-Hill's renowned Practical Flying Series.

Customer Reviews

A Must For All GA Pilots
No matter what flying experience you have, you WILL learn from this book. It covers all the mistakes that every pilot can and could make using real examples and also highlights the dangers that the current commercial aviation recruitment system has created.

Initially the book seems a little on the morbid side (to the point of making aviation off-putting) but you soon realise that the author has used a very clever method to get the relevant points across.

Strangely the book also makes you realise why your instructor spent all that time making you revise those vital checks but also highlights areas that 'went in one ear' but didn't really sink in. It certainly made me go back and re-learn everything to a far greater degree and change the way I pilot.

The book is probably only suitable for pilots with 1 hour or more.

Also - at £15 you can't go wrong;

Good book on safety
The format of the book is:

Each chapter covers a category of common mistakes (example booking a VFR flight which turns into IFR along the way). At the start of the chapter the author gives you the stastics of accidents in general aviation accidents for that category broken down by number of hours the pilot clocked up. This is to support his central theme that inexperience, and the consequential bad/reckless judgement that follows, kills.

He then goes on to give NTSB accident reports and then explains why those incidents should never have happened. Where necessary the author gives enough technical information for the reader to comprehend the point(s) he's trying to make. In some chapters he rounds off the chapter with reports from pilots who came close to tragedy but managed, at the last moment, to save themselves.

In my opponion the book does have 3 weaknesses:

1) The author is speaking from an American point of view so, whilst the general points have relevence in all countries, the legal/progression details are not totally applicable;

2) The much-vaunted self-assessment questionaire gives broad information on interpretation but leaves it mostly up to the reader to come up with recommendations; and

3) The book ends a little too quickly. Yes, there is a chapter on Airmanship, and a [very brief] chapter on dealing with the media, but the end of the book still feels abrupt.

As a guide to how not to fly it is invaluable. In fact I would say that it, or a book like it, should be compulsory reading for every student pilot. In fact I believe that a similar book should be done for learner drivers as well. However, that is not to say the book is without fault.

Student pilots ought to read this (UK Student pilot writes...)
I bought this book on the strength of other reviews and I am not disappointed. Understandably all of the accident descriptions are from the USA but this does not detract from the message.

I have only recently started my JAR-PPL training and am keen to learn. My instructor, and the teaching manuals, have given me invaluable information about how to fly the plane. What this book adds, I think, is other information about the mistakes that pilots (both students and certified) continue to make.

A lot of the suggestions (such as not flying into bad weather) seemed very obvious to me but there were other sections that I found very useful and interesting.

The bottom line is that pilots apparently keep making the same common mistakes. This book will tell you what they are and hopefully prevent you from being one of the unfortunate statistics. I recommend this book.