Jeff_Edwards
Ron Wanttaja posts an interesting article but there are several errors in his analysis that are worth mentioning. He states, “It’s interesting to note that most lethal of accidents—continued VFR into IFR conditions, buzzing, etc.—do occur near cruise speed.) As expected, a higher fatality rate is found among airplanes that can fly faster.” That fact is not born out by research that I participated in with the GAJSC that shows most fatal GA accidents involve a loss of control and are low speed events fmi see: https://www.gajsc.org/document-center/ Faster does not correlate to more fatal accidents, otherwise turbine aircraft would logically lead the way.
As he notes, not all accidents get reported so his denominators are suspect (at best). Many accidents are not reported or incorrectly reported or coded. I found many Lancair accidents were incorrectly coded by the FAA and NTSB. After the introduction of the Lancair IVP almost every Lancair accident was coded as a Lancair IVP, even if it was a Lancair 320 or 360. Aircraft recognition is not their strong suit.
As I said, the denominator is important when discussing accident rates. I encountered this several years ago when an FAA internal memo incorrectly noted a super majority of Lancair accidents had fatal results. They said, “Analysis of Lancair accidents revealed that the Lancair is over-represented in the experimental aircraft accident rate, and was not improving. For instance, Lancair aircraft only represented 3.2% of the experimental fleet, yet in FY 2008, they accounted for 6.6% of the accidents with a lethality rate approaching 60%. These percentages were worse in FY 2012 —Lancair accounted for 8.2% of the accidents with a lethality rate of 100%.” Simply not true. There were 30 accidents and incidents in the U.S. in 2008 with 11 of those fatal. Certainly not a good year but not 100%. As of 2016, when I published a white paper on the subject (found here: https://www.lancairowners.com/files/wp-content/uploads/2016-LOBO-White-Paper.pdf), our fleet of Lancairs had experienced 557 known accidents and incidents since 1988, including 116 fatal accidents involving 192 fatalities. 372 accidents and incidents involved no injuries at all. Efforts to reduce the fatal Lancair accident rate has paid off with just two fatal accidents last year but, the work continues to have an accident free fleet.
Pilots are often their own worst enemy. LOBO commissioned a safety study that utilized the GAJSC protocols for examining the data. The white paper reports on the research and found that nearly a majority (261) of the accidents involved a failure by pilots to follow procedures. Many of the accident pilots had no training in the aircraft they were flying. If pilots would simply take training from a recognized and well respected training provider and if the training community would standardize their training syllabus across their fleets like Robinson, COPA, Cirrus and the MU2 fleet have done, then we would see a serious reduction in the accident rate.
I appreciate Ron’s work on this subject and thank him for his thought provoking discussion.
Best regards,
Jeff Edwards, PhD, ATP and founder Lancair Owners and Builders Organization (LOBO)
