Last week a subscriber called to renew his General Aviation News subscription and buy a gift subscription for a friend.
Thank you Kurtis.
He then took a moment to tell me how much he appreciates being able to read the accident and incident reports included in each edition of General Aviation News. He also likes William DuBois’ Human Factors column, which dives a bit deeper into particular accidents.
But Kurtis also told me he feels the number of aircraft accidents to be on the increase since we turned the calendar to 2024.
So I pointed my web browser to the NTSB website.
The stats
Using the basic search form on the NTSB’s CAROL Query, the only fields I selected were the Dates, the Modes (Aviation), and the Country (United States).
I assume it takes a few days, or more, after an accident for preliminary data to be entered in the NTSB database, so I selected Jan. 1-15 as I gathered this information on Jan. 29.
The data below are the total number of accidents, followed by the fatal accidents, for that time period in past ten years:
- 2024: 28, 5
- 2023: 31, 7
- 2022: 30, 2
- 2021: 23, 5
- 2020: 32, 6
- 2019: 26, 6
- 2018: 29, 3
- 2017: 28, 8
- 2016: 34, 8
- 2015: 33, 7
The Aviation Investigation Search form allows for more granular filtering. You can search by aircraft category, injury level, operation type (Part 91, 121, 135, etc.), and more.
A broader perspective can be seen when looking at the total number of accidents for each year.
- 2023: 1,204
- 2022: 1,269
- 2021: 1,216
- 2020: 1,139
- 2019: 1,303
- 2018: 1,350
- 2017: 1,330
- 2016: 1,342
- 2015: 1,312
The dip in 2020 is likely from decreased aviation activity due to COVID.
A decent start to the year
All the above are absolute numbers.
A better analysis would be the rate at which these accidents are happening. That requires knowing the number of flights or hours flown.
The annual Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Institute Accident Report breaks down the data further and includes the rates at which accidents are happening, based on estimated hours flown by the fleet. But the latest complete report is from 2021.
The 28 accidents in the first 15 days of 2024 averages to fewer than two per day.
Since 2015, on average, every day there are more than three accidents, based on annual totals. I imagine the average number of accidents in 2024 will increase as the weather gets warmer and the hours of daylight in the U.S. increases.
Flying exists in three dimensions. There are lots of moving parts, including between our ears. And sometimes those parts conspire to make it difficult or impossible to a continue flight to a safe conclusion.
It would be great to report no aircraft accidents, ever. But the only absolute way to accomplish that is to never leave the ground.
Have fun and be safe out there.
‘Mornin’’ Ben, et al. Nice piece. As an old military (USCG) safety officer (flt and ground, USN PG Monterey) I used to brief new COs that I could assure him/her of zero accidents if we locked the hangar doors and bussed everyone home. Between that and our old USCG mantra “ya’ gotta’ go out but there are no guarantees comin’ home”… our “safety” was a matter of our excellent training, paying attention to ALL the details including command pressure, ego, and the occasionally overwhelming need to succeed in our life saving/counter drug business. It’s easy to say “that is there, we’re just GA”. Not so! Each of us has what skills we’ve acquired. If we’re sharp we keep adding to our bag of tricks. Getting another rating, flying with a friend to swap ideas, hangar sessions, they all add up. One of the best is “could I explain what I’m about to do” with a straight face to an accident board?… I’ve put one in the trees, I’ve used an old airmail pilot trick… and lived. There is no such thing as “enough” skill, knowledge, practice, flying 😎
Well said Terk. 100% agree.