At the recent FAA General Aviation (GA) Summit, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told participants that 2017 will be “our safest year yet.”
During the summit, which included representatives from six GA associations, Huerta praised the general aviation industry for helping to make safety improvements in general aviation.
“We first started this group to address the stubbornly high general aviation fatality rate,” he said. “And I’m happy to report we’re seeing results from these efforts. We’re still finalizing the numbers, but it looks like 2017 will end up being our safest year yet.”
Huerta said the general aviation fatal accident rate continues to decline, “far below our target rate of one per 100,000 flight hours. This is a significant accomplishment.”
One of the reasons for the improvement, according to Huerta, was the sharing of information among the FAA and the GA community.
“As long as general aviation accidents keep occurring, we must stay vigilant and keep finding new ways to advance our shared safety mission,” he said.
“General aviation’s engagement in the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) system is crucial,” he said. “We need to continue using data to identify trends and direct our efforts where they’re needed most.”
As long as the number of pilots, hours flown, aircraft and all other numbers related to GA activities, continue to decline, the number of fatalities will decline as well. Definitely not a figure that I would lend any significance, importance or credibility to.
It’s all per 100,000 flight hours, so it’s normalized to deal with the variables you mentioned.
Your so right. The activity is way down because of the cost to fly. The actual accident numbers are actually increasing…….