The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Air Safety Institute (ASI) released the 34th edition of its annual general aviation safety report noting that flight hours and total accidents have increased, while fatal accidents have decreased.
While it’s dry reading, every GA pilot would do well to spend a little time looking at this data, and asking themselves some tough questions about their own risk management strategy in light of it. As an independent CFI, I fly with a lot of advanced/experienced pilots. They generally think of their greatest risks as being equipment failure, mid-air collisions, and other very rare events. They spend their money and time accordingly - lots of investment in avionics, and lots of energy spent arguing in the pilot’s lounge and on the internet about “idiots” who won’t equip properly or pay attention to the same risks they themselves are concerned with.
… but the data says otherwise. We continue to maim and kill ourselves primarily as a result of inadequate skills and/or judgement. There’s no question the average pilot would benefit much more from spending a few hundred bucks on training with a CFI, or even just the avgas for solo takeoff and landing practice, than from thousands of dollars on advanced avionics, survival gear, oil analysis, and the like.
Of course, not everyone is an “average” pilot, and the better sticks amongst us are less likely to drive a perfectly good airplane into the ground. But don’t lie to yourself. About 1/3rd of all VFR-into-IMC accidents involve instrument-rated pilots. About 1/3rd of all landing accidents involve pilots with advanced certificates, and often thousands of hours. We can’t all be above average, and chances are that you (and I, too) are much more susceptible to the simple skill and judgement errors we don’t worry much about, than to the exotic, corner-case failures we do.
I don’t think people will read statistics from two years ago.
You’re probably right, but that’s a shame. The basic gist of the data hasn’t changed in the last 20 years, much less the last 2.
Sadly, it can take a year or more for the NTSB to complete the full report. I downloaded homebuilt accidents from 2022 in January of this year, and almost a third didn’t have a Probable Cause.
One can do top-level assessments of the number of accidents almost immediately, but if the goal is in-depth analysis, a wait is necessary.
Unfortunately, I think there’s too much fixation on year-to-year accident statistics. Accidents occur semi-randomly; one rarely finds a “driver” that explains a rise or fall from one year to the other. One year may have better weather than the previous, or an economic downturn may reduce the amount of pleasure flying.
One really has to look at the results long-term. This is a plot of what I call the “Fleet Accident Rate” from 2000 to 2021. The “fleet accident rate” is the number of accidents divided by the number of aircraft registered in that year.
http://www.wanttaja.com/accidents.jpg
Note that this plot ignores the number of hours flown. It shows a slight reduction in the 2007-2010 time period…a time period which corresponds to a recession.
Did the recession cause less activity, and lead to fewer accidents? Who knows?
In any case, the results seem to show a reduction in the homebuilt accident rate, while that of the overall US registry is pretty stable.
You are totally correct.
So… less passengers? That would also explain it.
Someone has to help support the statistician. It might as well be the tax payer even though the stats don’t do a damn thing too change the outcome. Just more noise to clutter your brain.
Vance has got it right and he doesn’t need a statistic to prove his point. A little common sense sprinkled with practical experience is all that is required. This is really not all that difficult to figure out. That being said, humans always gravitate towards that which is the easiest way out and technology is the elixir. Recognizing technologies shortcomings and making the required change is the solution.
I’m afraid I disagree: Statistics work can be valuable.
There is a lot of misinformation in the world, and statistical analysis of accident data can provide the truth.
Over the years, I have had people tell me that A) Continued VFR flight into IFR conditions is the leading cause of GA accidents, or B) Running out of fuel is the leading cause of GA accidents, or C) Aircraft type XXXX has an appalling accident rate.
Easily disprovable with statistics analysis. Less than 3% of Cessna 172 accidents (the most common single aircraft type) are due to continued VFR into IFR conditions, less than 5% involve fuel management, and depending what XXXX is, it turns out that most of its accidents involve the same percentage of cause as lesser aircraft.
Yet, of course, there are those that just don’t believe it. They continue to think that they’d never run an airplane out of fuel…and ignore the fact that TEN TIMES the number of accidents are due to failures in the pilots’ skills.
Here’s a example from my own analysis work. I study (mostly) homebuilt aircraft accidents, and several years ago, did a study of WHERE stall accidents occur. In this case, I’m talking about accidents which were not due to power issues; where the pilot, for some reason or the other, stalls and crashes their aircraft.
Hey, we ALL know the answer, right? Our instructors drummed it into us: The base-to-final turn is where we get bitten.
Oddly enough, that’s not what statistics tell us. Thirty-six percent of homebuilt stall accidents (again, that’s with fully-functional engines) occur on takeoff or initial climb. Base-to-Final is HALF THAT.
Why? Why are pilots stalling out when their engines are basically just climbing straight out, with the throttle to the wall?
I don’t have an answer to “why”. About the only guess I have is that the pilots are distracted, probably thinking ahead to their next action, fiddling with the GPS, etc.
But it’s a statistic (oh, that word again) that should make every pilot think. And remember when they start their flights; that the wheels leaving the ground is the START of danger, not just the beginning of fun.
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