It was a sad last week of last year.

Three people died in a single-engine piston aircraft trying to land as it approached Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge Airport, TN. The pilot did not have an instrument rating and the weather was bad. Then a single-engine propjet aircraft crashed after “several” reported approaches to the pilot’s (evidently a well-qualified pilot who had flown around the world) home airport in Florida. Both people on board died. Next, a private jet aircraft disappeared over Lake Erie. All five people on board are assumed dead.

Ten people in three accidents in one week. Weather was an assumed factor in each accident.

We feel for the families involved. Many — most? — of us have been touched by aviation accidents, and we remember the feeling all too well.

You probably had many questions from non-aviation friends during that last week — questions such as, “How could that happen?” “What were they thinking?” “Is that typical?”

The truth is that general aviation — except for corporate aircraft operated by professional crews — will most likely never be as safe as the airlines. If that seems strange or horrifying, stop and think. Will driving yourself in a car ever be as safe as riding on Greyhound or Trailways? No way.

There’s just no way we can give people both the freedom to drive or fly the way they want and also the safety that professionals provide. It ain’t gonna happen.

We can do a better job of impressing GA pilots with the importance of providing their own strict safety rules and limits. Urge them to take a copilot when WX is bad (don’t we wish John Kennedy had done that?).

We need to produce/maintain pilots who understand that safety and caution are more important than completing this flight. Period. The hero is not the pilot who always reaches his/her destination, no matter what. The hero is (as a Mississippi crop-duster once told me) the pilot who lives to reach a ripe old age.

Let’s tell that story — shout it from the rafters.