The notices arrived in my in-box almost hand in hand. Analyzing the previous year’s data, the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Joseph T. Nall Report for 2010 gives the good and bad news about general aviation accidents. And the 2011 Safety Standdown itemizes the FAA’s new multi-medium effort to prevent them.
The good news is that for-hire fixed-wing ops, from ag application to Part-135 transportation of humans and cargo, posted a substantial improvement in safety. The number of accidents dropped by a third over 2008 and the number of fatal accidents (two ag applicators) fell 88 percent.
The bad news is that not-for-hire GA flight activity fell by 10 percent in 2009 (which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone), but the number of accidents dropped only 5 percent. The really bad news is that while we’re flying less, we’re dying more often. The number of fatal accidents increased 4 percent.
Personal flights, which used to account for the majority of GA activity, accounted for less than half of all non-rev GA flight time. It made up for its lost dominance by giving us more than three quarters of all GA accidents and 85 percent of fatal accidents.
The report goes on to categorize the number of accidents by pilot certificate. Private pilots, as one might expect, lead the pack, but that’s secondary to the fact that most accidents happen on flights made for personal pleasure.
The bottom line is that pilots haven’t learned from the mistakes made by their predecessors. So the FAA Safety Team has sorted them into four themes—Positive Flight Attitude, Going Beyond Preflight, En Route Cruise, and Maneuvering Flight—in its new Safety Standdown.
