Flying competitions is risky business!

While during gliding in a club, the accident rate averages on 14 fatal accidents per 1M flights, competitions record 144 fatal accidents per 1M flights, ten times the number of non-competition gliding!

What does this mean in real life? Imagine a competition with 50 participants, two training days, and ten scoring days. In this competition, the probability to be witness (or even victim) of a fatal accident is 8%!

Do you want to bear this risk, being competition pilot or competition lead?

Why are accident rates this high? Competition pilots are no rookies!

But this is one of the key problems: A wise man once said: Rookies make rookie mistakes. Expert make expert mistakes.

Competitions exert a very high stress level due to the competitive pressure—way higher than during normal flights on the weekends. Additionally, there is the knowledge about the own abilities and the imagined obligation to fly. Even if not fit 100%, no one will skip a scoring day. This tunnel view for success, also called target fixation, cannot be overcome with our legacy methods for accident prevention.

Target Fixation: Focussed on success (only!)