GUEST EDITORIAL By Paul “BJ” Ransbury
If you fly airplanes for a living or for the love of it, you already know the risk that keeps many of us up at night: Loss of Control In-flight (LOC-I).
The big-picture numbers are sobering. Boeing’s April 2025 Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents shows that from 2015-2024, LOC-I accounted for 428 of 982 onboard fatalities in worldwide commercial jet operations, 44% of all deaths in that period.
In the U.S., NTSB civil aviation data from 2014-2023 tell a similar story when you separate personal and business flying. When accidents are grouped by “defining event,” LOC-I sits at the top of the fatality list in both segments.
Across that decade, LOC-I is responsible for about 40% of business aviation fatalities and roughly 45% of personal aviation fatalities in fixed-wing airplanes — despite all our advances in avionics, automation, and reliability.
The latest Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Institute’s Richard G. McSpadden Report points in the same direction. In 2023, the most recent year for which full data is available, LOC-I appears as the leading cause category in multiple phases of flight for non-commercial fixed-wing flying.
In maneuvering, LOC-I accounted for 16 accidents, 10 of them fatal. In descent and approach, LOC-I again tied for the top accident category with 27 total accidents. And during en route operations, LOC-I recorded 15 accidents, 12 of them fatal.
Across the year’s accident landscape, LOC-I repeatedly shows up as a dominant contributor — reinforcing how persistent and widespread this threat remains.
This is not a general aviation problem or an airline problem. It’s a systemic aviation training problem.
So what’s going on?
It’s clearly not a lack of awareness. Every pilot has heard about LOC-I. Many have watched accident videos and safety seminars.
Yet when a real upset unfolds — often fast, sometimes with surprise or startle — far too often pilots are unable to recover.
From our perspective at the Upset Prevention and Recovery Training Association International (UPRTA International), the gap is pilot readiness and proactivity, not risk awareness.
Most pilots rarely experience true upsets with realistic G-loads, unusual attitudes, and the psychological punch that comes with “this might not end well.” Traditional training systems tend to rehearse small errors in a calm cockpit, not large problems under pressure.
When an unexpected, startling airplane upset happens without the pilot having participated in robust upset training, the human brain and body behave differently — motor skills degrade, scan narrows, and the unprepared pilot often applies control inputs that deepen the upset instead of the correct, often counter-intuitive, inputs to resolve it.
That’s why the global aviation community has moved toward structured upset training — an integrated approach that blends academics, high-fidelity simulation, and carefully designed on-aircraft training to build both cognitive understanding and automatic, correct motor responses.
Regulators around the world, including the FAA and EASA, all now point in the same direction: We need pilots who can recognize a developing upset early, avoid it when possible, and recover correctly when they can’t.
The challenge is doing this well and consistently.
The work of UPRTA International — and its Every Pilot In Control Solution Standard (EPIC-S2) — is aimed at exactly that problem.
EPIC-S2 isn’t about promoting any single provider — it’s about defining what “effective” looks like. Training that is all-attitude, all-envelope, yet appropriate and transferable to the pilot-in-training’s aircraft and operation. A progressive path from classroom to simulator to airplane so pilots experience realistic surprise and workload. A focus on behavioral change and what pilots actually do under stress, not just box-checking maneuvers.
When upset training follows those principles, we see pilots retain the skills, recall them under pressure, and apply them in the real world. That’s the path to bending these curves down — whether you fly a piston single, a turboprop, or a high-performance jet.
On Dec. 17, 2025, at the free UPRTA International UPRT Safety Summit for Pilots Worldwide, we’re bringing together experts from general aviation, business aviation, airlines, regulators, human-factors research, and SMS to do three things:
- Lay out the data plainly from Boeing, NTSB, AOPA, and others so there’s no ambiguity about where LOC-I really sits in the risk picture;
- Show what’s working to highlight evidence-based upset-training approaches that are actually changing pilot behavior; and
- Give pilots a roadmap, whether that’s aligning an in-house program with UPRTA’s EPIC-S2 or choosing an external provider that can meet those standards.
For UPRTA International, this isn’t abstract. Every number in these reports represents real people — pilots, families, the traveling public at large — who expected a normal flight and never got home. The technology in our cockpits is extraordinary. But the last line of defense is still the pilot, a human being holding the controls.
We owe it to each other to be ready for the worst day, not just the average one. Let’s stop treating LOC-I as an unavoidable statistic. With honest data, serious upset training, and a shared standard for “good,” we can change this story. Let’s fix it together.
You can register for the free virtual safety summit at UPRTA.org/Events/2025SafetySummit
Can’t attend the live summit? Recordings of all sessions will be available at UPRTA.org/events/2025SafetySummit. Scroll to or click AGENDA to find the links.
Paul ‘BJ’ Ransbury is president of the Upset Prevention and Recovery Training Association International (UPRTA International).
In Canada, 30 years ago, we had to demonstrate spin recovery to pass our private certificate. Most remember well their first solo…I remember the first time I went a up alone to practice spins…I remember vividly looking at the empty seat to my right before doing my first of 5 five to the left then another 5 to the right…
I actually learned to enjoy doing spins! I had demystified what was really going on.
I imagine it must be disconcerting to be in that situation after flying straight and level for years of flying.
All of these comments and observations are valid.
Even today, when watching replays of major airliner LOC incidents, I see the Captain, in what is clearly a deep stall, hauling back on the control column, thereby exacerbating a recoverable profile whilst not noticing a high rate of descent and low airspeed, that could be resolved by the simple act of pushing the nose down.
Is this very basic handling manoeuvre not taught and ingrained throughout training and type rating sim checks regularly thereafter…..?
I am now age 81, did my flying training in 1965 with the RAF, and yes, many of my instructors were ex WW2 pilots.
To me it always seemed to be a lack of mechanical intuition. This happened and this is what could cause that. Checklists are a substitute for that. Blowing a cylinder off doesn’t warrant applying carb heat. Some of the high profile accidents resulted because there wasn’t time to follow procedures.
Just my perspective and suggesting we be mavericks, although sometimes that works. 😌
Alaska pilots use the old-fashion way to avoid LOC accidents. They watch the airplane when in the landing pattern. The airplane shows you everything you need to know about never reducing speed below the stall limit. You come in for landing not at 1.3 Vso, but at incipient stall speed that is a lower speed that provides safer landings. You slow the airplane down until it gently makes a slight dip (this is initial stall speed). At this point you may have to add a slight touch of throttle to provide a safe glide without falling out of the sky and crashing (this is the LOC accident happening). As a 47-year Alaskan pilot, I never have let my airplane slow down enough to cause a LOC! Is my 47 years of any value?
Up Set training was the norm in the early 1970’s all my instructors during my Private Pilot Training include some form of this training.
My Introductory flight with was a WWII corsair F4U pilot took me for my intro flight in a Cessna 152 Aerobat. Well 15 Minuit’s in to the flight there we were upside down.
He said it is all yours I some how managed to right the plane. This was my beginning love affair with flying.
Even when i got my Instrument rating it was included.
I think it goes back even farther than what Paul suggests below with the new pipeline of getting pilots trained quickly. There is certainly a lack of practical learning in today’s training environment. I truly believe that when teaching stalls was thought to be dangerous and replaced with the approach to stall, a big disservice was done to the entire community.
I have to say I was a little set back by the opening statement in the article about the assumption that the loss of control risk keeps many of us up at night. That’s worrisome. If that’s the case I would hope that those pilots will seek training.
I fully agree with Bruce. I would suggest that it originated even further back when electric starters came in replacing hand cranking the propeller and spin recovery was removed from the training manual. Both skills were said to be to dangerous to the up and coming pilots and awareness of flying associated dangers have been dumbed down to less than the danger of driving on the highway. Both of the fore going , now discarded , originally required skills , have been long discarded. Pilots have had necessary important skills removed as has happened to auto drivers when skid control/recovery disappeared from driving skill requirements. To many , both pilots and auto drivers , the use of aircraft and cars has become a case of ” fat, dumb & happy.” Do not disturb.
I have to whole heartedly agree with Paul on this. The US already did away with spin training and now stall recovery. We generated a new generation of pilots that need to fly a Cirrus with a shoot because they have never trained to recover from a spin. Now we are generating another generation that doesn’t train to recover from a stall. That should help the Cirrus bottom line. Wonder why we now see so many stall/spin accidents? Australian regulators are demanding more flight training because general aviation has a higher accident rate than commercial aviation. But, at the same time they are bemoaning endangering pilots and instructors by teaching single engine training on twins and spin recovery. Would they rather see multi-pilots deal with their first engine out with a plane load of passengers rather than a trained CFI?
Yes, more training accidents happen doing spin training and engine out training. But if it’s going to happen, you want it to be in training where everyone involved understand the risks rather than flying the general public who may not understand the risks.
Much like hand propping aircraft. I often run into pilots with a run down battery that have no idea how to start their planes without the battery, and would be unsafe doing so if they did. To date, I have owned 5 non-electric planes, so have hand propped literally thousands of times without incident. Much like stall, spin and engine out training, it’s only unsafe if you haven’t trained and don’t know how.
This is not a general aviation problem or an airline problem. It’s a systemic aviation training problem.
The problem begins with the abinitio training of pilots. Often this is given is given by the newest recently qualified instructors when the initial instruction should be given by the most experienced instructors. All flying should be governed by a “what if…” mind set. Always be fully aware of possible emergencies arising. By making this a permanent mind set for the last 65+ years has enabled me to effectively deal with in-flight fire (x3), pilots freezing on the controls and other rather disconcerting experiences. I was fortunate that my early instructors were experienced ex WW 2 pilots who survived by having had this mindset drilled into them and passed this mindset on to me.
LOC-I is the ‘elephant o the room’ [ or in the air ].
I registered and hope to learn how to recognize and avoid / apply corrective actions.