NTSB To GA: You Can Do Better

The predominate causes of general aviation accidents aren’t a mystery. Each month in these pages, each year in the AOPA Aviation Safety Institute’s Nall Report and every day at the NTSB, mishaps are reviewed, dissected, catalogued and judged. The depressing thing about this process is the mind-numbing predictability of it all: Over time, some specific proportion of general aviation accidents will be caused by one thing while other causes will have their own percentage. The numbers don’t change that much from month to month, or year to year. It’s frustrating.

Key Takeaways:

• General aviation accidents are consistently predictable in their causes and largely preventable, frustrating safety organizations like the NTSB due to their recurring nature.
• Key accident types addressed by NTSB Safety Alerts include low-altitude stalls (often linked to "showing off"), reduced visibility (leading to spatial disorientation or controlled flight into terrain), and mechanical issues often overlooked by pilots or resulting from maintenance errors.
• A significant number of fatal accidents are ultimately attributed to poor aeronautical decision-making and ineffective risk management by pilots, who often fail to recognize or manage compounding risks.

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