The Killing Zone is, uh, is what?

Well, and this is the third edition, as you mentioned, and I started the, the analysis of general aviation aircraft accidents and trends way back in 1983, 'cause that's the first year I became a flight instructor.

That's why I started the, at that m- at that point.

And w- when the r- initial research turned up that pilots that have lower time had a higher rate, not just a count number, but a rate number of accidents, and, uh, originally called the Danger Zone, uh, but it got turned into the Killing Zone, and, and that zone, that range, is from about 50 to 350 flight hours.

And, uh, over the years, the total number of accidents have declined from all the work you've done and, and w- what I've tried to do, and all of our colleagues who are in aviation, aviation safety, have done a terrific job at reducing the total number.

So when I went into this third edition possibility, I didn't know for sure if there was a killing zone.

Maybe, maybe we'd solved this problem.

Wow.

What do you say to those people?

Well, if that's how we measured it, they would be right.

If we just counted the numbers themselves, you know, just as a weird example, I looked this up.

that how many Cessna 172s have been in accidents? Well, the number is not exactly correct.

I just did a quick search.

But I came up with 8,240.

OK, that's a lot of accidents.

So in your opinion, what does scenario-based training look like and why is it better than the maybe traditional model of flight training?

Yeah, imagine that.

So, [laughs] so, so the publisher decided we didn't want to flirt with the possible, uh, issues dealing with copyright infringement or whatever.

So that's how it arrived at, at this title.

And so I, of course, I had the chance over the years, since we're in the third edition, to change it, but, but the i- the idea is not to scare anybody, but to just wake them up.

I, I think I say, you know, it's if, if you read that title and if I'm shaking you by the shoulder and saying, "You know, this can be...

This can happen to you.

This, this is something that you, we all have to pay attention to." Um, and if, if that jarring title does that, then, and we get, uh, their attention, then I guess that was successful.

... that you haven't told before on the show.

So just walk us through the data precept and foundation for the entire book.

Well, sure.

Let me let me let me say that I didn't start off knowing that.

there was going to be something called a killing zone.

I was just counting numbers and counting data.

And so I used the National Transportation Safety Board, their data, also some of the, what we'd call the NASA forms information as well, Aviation Safety Reporting System.

So these are all, everything is public information.

So what could you direct squarely at the midlife pilot? Well, first of all,