Comments on: “Over The Airwaves” and the GA Fatal Accident Rate

By: Brent

Brent — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:09:16 +0000

One very significant factor not touched on is the very significant numbers of aircraft, such as my own, which use auto fuel exclusively thus calling into great question the correlation between sales of 100LL and flight hours. Since 2000 I have flown amost 600 hours in my homebuilt Zenith Zodiac including one and a half round trips across the nation, and in that time I’ve used 100 LL only a few times when auto fuel wasn’t available. There are thousands of Rotax powered aircraft in the air, all of which I believe you’ll find are using auto fuel virtually exclusively. Add to that the number of auto fuel STC’d aircraft which is growing every year. Unless one is close to the experimental aircraft world that segment of general aviation tends to fall under the radar. With far more experimentals launched every year than the combined total of all certificated piston singles, ignoring this population can skew all kinds of statistics.

While accident rates for experimentals is higher than for certificated aircraft, the record is still pretty good. Nevertheless, with the steadily growing percentage of the fleet represented by experimentals, the ratio of fatalities to 100LL sales is further affected due to experimentals’ disproportionate share of the accident statistics.

By: Dale

Dale — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 05:57:37 +0000

Ron,

You make some valid points and I won’t argue them. It is true that the Corporate and Charter world has changed. Where once there were 310′s or Baron’s, there are now King Airs.

Corporations used to be happy to fly their people around in AeroCommanders and Aerostars, I hardly ever see that anymore. Most corporate flight departments want to burn jetA even if it’s going through a PT-6.

The aviation fuel purchased per day is an interesting data point. I’m not sure what to make of it without more thought.

Good points, keep up the thinking and writing,

best,

Dale

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:07:26 +0000

I believe accident data is broken down into sub-groups by the Air Safety Foundation’s Nall Report, and they analyze the data to find emerging trends.

For the most recent year, the ASF noted the just such a trend: “an increase in fatal maneuvering flight accidents; in 2005 there were 80 such accidents versus 52 in 2004″.

If there’s one trend I’ve noticed in the Nall Report, it’s that most accidents are caused by gross errors of judgment. Buzzing, low level aerobatics, fuel exhaustion, flying while intoxicated, etc.

Thanks again for the shout-out about the PHP errors.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:41:22 +0000

I’d have to agree, especially on the number of datapoints issue. A trend line through 6 data points with that kind of variance between them is likely to have a poor confidence value.

I wonder if breaking the accidents down into sub-groups (CFIT, VFR flight into IFR, fuel management, etc.) would offer a better view. Then asking things like “are more pilots dying from running out of fuel than in the past, and is that likely to get worse taking into account the most commonly used airplanes, technology, and techniques of today?” might start to generate trends for each, which could be merged into a (subjective but) maybe more accurate viewpoint.