I briefly entertained flying planes as a hobby. I live next to a small-ish local airfield and a coworker of mine got his license there. Then I learned more about it, and there's way to many accidents like these for me to be comfortable with the risk I'd be taking.

I have no issue with flying commercial planes, but I guess I don't trust myself _and_ the smaller planes enough to do this.

RIP Claude, horrible way to die.

• bombcar

  today at 5:39 PM

  I had a similar decision to make (pilot or motorbike) and the fact that 60%+ of aviation deaths are pilot error and something like 60%+ of motorcycle crashes are NOT the rider's fault - led me to be a pilot. At least then I can try to make good decisions, e.g, DO NOT FLY INTO WEATHER.

  • _jss

    today at 6:15 PM

    And a lot of the pilot deaths are not because of in-the-moment skill deficiencies.

    Stick and rudder skills aren't that useful with fuel exhaustion and bad weather planning. It's much easier to stay safer in a plane vs motorcycle.

    I wish people treated cars and motorcycles properly, especially in the US. Until then, no motorcycles for me either :(

• miketery

  today at 4:58 PM

  I got my glider license at 16 and private at 17. Majority of accidents are human error. Though yes an accident with a plane is much costlier than one with a car.

  I encourage you to read NTSB accident reports. The work the investigators do and the reports they assemble are unparalleled. There are also good parallels to complex systems in general.

  • gpm

    today at 5:23 PM

    It seems like unjustifiable hubris to assume that I'm significantly less susceptible to human error than the average person that decides to become a pilot.

    • applfanboysbgon

      today at 5:37 PM

      If you're even thinking about the danger, it's absolutely justifiable to believe you're above the average already. The average person has zero regard for their own safety; governments have to literally force people to wear seatbelts in cars or helmets on motorcycles because they won't do it without threat of financial penalty.

      • toss1

        today at 6:08 PM

        Indeed most of them wont do it without threat

        OTOH, there are those, particularly those who actually get training and practice in the high-performance zone, who realize the physics of the situation, and feel positively naked driving out without a seatbelt/harness, or helmet where appropriate.

  • causal

    today at 6:07 PM

    Too many people read "human error" as "human preventable" rather than "a thing you will also do because you are human"

My Dad, a flight instructor, loves to remind me that there are bold pilots and old pilots. But there are no old bold pilots.

• lostlogin

  today at 6:25 PM

  Chuck Yeager seemed pretty bold and died at 96.

  Yay, one old bold pilot.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager

Similarly, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608732

memento mori

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Guillemot

Bad two weeks for aviation.

• zahlman

  today at 5:13 PM

  Hmm? What else did I miss?

  • myvoiceismypass

    today at 5:50 PM

    Oliver Tree is a musician who died in a helicopter crash recently too.

  • toomuchtodo

    today at 5:20 PM

    Joshua Baer, founder and CEO of Austin's Capital Factory VC firm, killed in plane crash near Laredo, Texas.

    https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Personal aircraft. The great equalizer.

• kylecazar

  today at 4:02 PM

  I clicked a news article a few months ago about a crash... Google has since decided I need to know about all future aviation accidents. I was surprised how frequent it happens. Two brothers were killed in a Cessna just the other day.

  I suppose it's a combination of lower maintenance standards and pilot experience, definitely doesn't make me want to hop in a small plane anytime soon.

  • ultrarunner

    today at 4:14 PM

    Counterintuitively, it's probably the unrealistically high maintenance standards that lead to 1) no available qualified mechanics, and 2) incredibly high prices, resulting in 3) deferring whatever is possible to defer. This is the situation in the US; I imagine costs are doubly impactful in a country like France.

    • jmward01

      today at 4:40 PM

      Aviation is in a huge rut. A major issue is that innovation is nearly dead. Want to bring a new aircraft to market? Got 5-10 years to get it certified while not being able to sell it to a market size of....? How about a new engine? In GA we fly 80yo designs around not because they are great, but because nobody can innovate to bring in the better stuff. I have a lot of hope for electric aviation because a new regulatory space and simpler designs may mean faster certification which could lead to real innovation in the space.

      • clarkmoody

        today at 5:37 PM

        Don't forget that the incumbents will fight to keep regulatory barriers high.

      • airstrike

        today at 5:02 PM

        I'd read this blog post.

        • adastra22

          today at 6:03 PM

          You just did.

    • NordSteve

      today at 4:19 PM

      It's certainly possible to maintain GA aircraft to a high standard and not break the bank. For example, a flying club I'm in has Cessna 172s for $116/hr wet with no-compromises maintenance.

      • ultrarunner

        today at 5:12 PM

        If you're not directly involved in the maintenance, I am skeptical. For example, many flying clubs only exist because they have members who are A&Ps / IAs, who maintain the plane in consideration of membership. That's a workaround for the problem I'm presenting. I won't say it's impossible, but it's increasingly difficult and location-dependent.

    • pixl97

      today at 4:20 PM

      >unrealistically high maintenance standards

      Na, no thank you. I prefer planes not falling out of the sky, especially personal aircraft that already have a very high crash rate due to pilot error alone.

      >deferring whatever is possible to defer

      Yea, I don't think so. I've seen too many important but non life or death maintenance deferred for reasons outside of money that lead to later disaster. People just kind of suck at it unless they are forced.

      • ultrarunner

        today at 4:35 PM

        Well, you'll probably get your wish in the US anyway. I just paid $50 for a 2 inch square vacuum pump cover that should have cost $5. I have oil hoses that I would like to replace, but the $750 price tag (up $200 in six months) is giving me pause— replace, hope for the best, or hang it up and stop flying?

        Like it or not, more force will definitely raise costs, but it'll also push folks from category one to categories two and three. Or they'll just ignore the regs and begin a normalization of deviance.

        [0] https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/superior08-11...

      • robcohen

        today at 4:31 PM

        So right now, A&Ps make about 120-150 per hour, and they have the skills to get hired at dealerships where the hourly is above 200. There are not enough A&Ps.

        I understand the logic you're using when you say you're happy that the standards are high. What you don't understand is how many A&Ps pencil whip annuals, or overlook corrosion or other safety issues all the time. They are overworked, and spend their time focused on a lot of box checking things that do not matter much and not enough time focusing on the things that do.

        Let me make it clearer. If you used the same standards for your car, you'd have to get it fully reinspected every year and fix everything. A little corrosion on your hubcaps? Replace all of them (at 20x the cost you're used to). A chip in your windshield (replace the entire windshield at 10x the cost). Etc etc.

        Source: I am studying for the A&P and I own a Cessna 182. The regs really do need to change for smaller certificated aircraft (such as changing annuals to semi-annuals). Look up Mike Busch and his videos on what reforms should look like.

        I just had my plane in for an annual. No significant issues. Took 5 months. My plane was in the shop for 5 months. Remember, this is required ANNUALLY. That's how bad the shortage is right now. It's bad enough that I'm willing to take 6 months off work to go __become__ an A&P so I don't need to deal with them anymore.

        • markus_zhang

          today at 5:17 PM

          This sounds crazy. I wonder how it looks like in Canada. BTW A&P course only takes 6 months?

    • echoangle

      today at 4:28 PM

      Citation needed. Afaik they mostly crash from pilot error, not technical problems caused by too little maintenance.

      • bombcar

        today at 5:37 PM

        The vast majority of GA crashes are pilot error directly or indirectly (taking off without fuel is "technically" a mechanical issue but really pilot failure).

        Equipment failure is pretty low on list.

    • dirtbagskier

      today at 4:20 PM

      [dead]

    • today at 4:19 PM

  • mc32

    today at 5:24 PM

    THere are parachutes for small aircraft these days. If I were flying one and had their money I would get that installed. Of course that doesn’t protect against crashing into mountainsides or losing ones orientation, but it does help against engine failure at altitude.

• master_crab

  today at 4:00 PM

  “Doctor killer” for a reason.

  It can be monotonous and degrading, but commercial air is the safe way to travel.

  • altmanaltman

    today at 4:31 PM

    It was a Cessna 421 so its not really about travel but flying as a hobby most likely.

    • weaksauce

      today at 5:28 PM

      probably a hobby but a 421 is a high performance dual engine with a pressurized cabin... that's a lot of plane and dual engines are difficult to fly with a lot of technical knowledge and practice to handle an engine out procedure safely. this kind of plane very commonly kills doctors and other high earning individuals that don't have the time to keep their time in the plane to stay recent.

      a lot of time people do buy multi engine planes for travel so it's not certain it was just a hobby.

• jmartrican

  today at 5:22 PM

  I worked for a small successful company in the pharmaceutical industry. One of their founders died in a crash in his small personal aircraft. He was a really nice guy and very charismatic. I was not working there when the accident happened, but I was sad to hear about it.

  I agree with OP's sentiment.

• pixl97

  today at 3:58 PM

  Seems aircraft have been hard on tech this week.

Why don't planes have parachutes? like a huge parachute that pops on stall to slowly descent the plane?

• verelo

  today at 4:43 PM

  Some do. Sr-22 for example.

  However, often if you’re handling things well, loosing an engine isn’t the end of the world.

  A lot of accidents happen very close to the ground, at height wear a parachute wouldn’t necessarily be helpful anyway.

  A parachute, a great solution for some scenarios, but for many, it’s not going to change the outcome. Such examples would be mid collisions, low altitude spiral dives, fires, or anything related to a shortage of oxygen. You also need to consider that during a lot of accidents, other factors, such as weather might be impacting the decision matrix of the pilot, and that might prevent them from using a parachute until it’s too late.

  The parachutes are also another maintenance item in increasing the cost of running the plane, and generally, the airframe won’t survive the accident, so people are hesitant to deploy them.

• dxdm

  today at 4:41 PM

  Some do:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst...

  • psvv

    today at 5:40 PM

    Funny, I put parachutes on my airplanes in kerbal space program (as a safety feature) but never considered what the real-life analogue to that would be. Turns out it's very similar!

• jmward01

  today at 4:44 PM

  Some do [1]. But in GA the costs to fly are so high that adding yet another cost means it is impractical for most GA pilots.

  [1] https://brsaerospace.com/

So many nerds here in Silicon Valley love to fly small aircraft, it’s an autistic comorbidity. You’ll never catch me acting so foolish.

• infecto

  today at 5:33 PM

  I would argue it has a much closer intersection with wealth.

• GlacierFox

  today at 5:13 PM

  "autistic comorbidity"

  Wtf haha. Everything's autism nowadays isn't it.

  Perhaps it's just an alignment of having the money to buy a small plane and being interested in planes.

Non paywall source: https://www.reuters.com/world/ubisofts-co-founder-claude-gui...

• dang

  today at 6:01 PM

  Thanks, we've changed to that from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-20/ubisoft-c... above.

• SoftTalker

  today at 4:22 PM

  Paywall there for me, or "allow ads."

  Other than the fact that the crash happened, there doesn't seem to be any more detailed news yet, so the headline says pretty much what there is to know at this time.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons Elon became so important at Tesla. The other key players died in a freakish plane crash, apparently hitting transmission lines at low altitude which is not something parachutes would likely have helped with.

https://www.wired.com/2010/02/plane-crash-kills-tesla-employ...

• sourcegrift

  today at 5:39 PM

  And he doomed tesla which was earlier soaring to become a trillion dollar company

[flagged]

• dang

  today at 6:00 PM

  Please don't do this here.

[flagged]

• nullable_bool

  today at 4:06 PM

  Im going to put my money on the latter.

• smt88

  today at 4:04 PM

  It seems like you’re just trying to say he was a bad guy and you’re glad he’s dead, which is a valid way to feel, but doesn’t seem like the right type of comment for HN.

  Maybe framing it as, “For those who don’t know this name, here’s why I do:” would be more interesting and helpful.

  • speedgoose

    today at 4:09 PM

    No, I’m not glad he is dead.