Aviation Accident Data For Skeptics

An aircraft accident would seem like an easy thing to identify: Look for the smoking crater with a few pieces of empennage sticking out, right? Okay, that one probably qualifies. But the national statistics are derived from a very specific definition of accident thats not based on either the events immediate effects on airworthiness or the projected cost of repairs. Airplanes can be and often are scrapped for damage that would cost more to fix than their hulls are worth but still doesnt qualify as substantial enough to merit reporting. Conversely, damage that does qualify sometimes goes unnoticed by the pilots who inflicted it, only to be discovered on a later pre-flight inspection.

David Jack Kenny

Friday, June 22, 2018 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

For the past couple of years, the NTSB, FAA and industry interest groups have been able to point to reductions in both overall and fatal GA accident rates as welcome signs of progress. Without question, this is better news than if those numbers had been going up, but the processes that produce official accident data are quirky and counterintuitive enough to make the significance of those declines difficult to assess.

Worse, the inherent limitations of what information is collected, when and how make it impossible to answer questions of obvious interest and practical concern, such as the importance of time in type and the changes in risk profile that accompany increasing pilot experience.