The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Institute has released the updated Fatal Flight Training Accident Report 2000 – 2019.
A collaboration between the AOPA Air Safety Institute and the Liberty University School of Aeronautics, the study covers fatal training accidents in the United States, offers a breakdown of accidents and their causes, and concludes with accident prevention and mitigation recommendations.
The report notes that loss of control comprises the largest accident category, accounting for 54% of all fatal instructional accidents, with the vast majority being stall/spin related.
“The aviation industry has done an excellent job of stall/spin awareness when overshooting base to final,” said Robert Geske, AOPA Air Safety Institute manager of aviation safety analysis. “Similarly, we should stress stall/spin risk during takeoff, climb-out, and go-around, and emphasize energy awareness and management during those flight phases.”
“The good news is that flight training is getting safer,” said Andrew Walton, Liberty University director of safety. “Sustained efforts by the FAA, NTSB, manufacturers, and the flight training community have resulted in a fatal accident rate that is now roughly half of what it was at the start of the century.”
“From 2000 to 2004, the fatal accident rate averaged 0.49 per 100,000 hours and decreased to 0.26 in the last five years of the study,” he said. “However, there remains plenty of work to do, particularly in mitigating the risk of loss of control in flight.”
You can view the full report here.
Loss of control is only one of many causes of accidents. It’s whistling in the dark past the cemetery. All the accident reports we read of daily on this news site include failure to do adequate pre-flight check; failure to study weather before heading cross-country; trying to land in the dark by VFR-only pilots; engine failures due to mechanics’ mistakes and vacuum pumps operated years beyond their recommended replacement dates; failure to apply carb icing in time; failure to switch between fuel tanks before fuel starvation. There’s more but this list is illustrative. While one can justly applaud the GA community at large in cluding the gov’t agencies for ‘showing improvement,’ I agree with Wylbur Wrong that this report is putting lipstick on a pig. GA has a long way to go in the safety department.
Regards/J
I would like to see this correlated to # of active pilots, and/# of hours flown in a year (totaled) broken down by age group. This is the kind of actuarial info used by insurance companies to determine our rates.
What are the choices?