AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2014 - 18

SAFETY PILOT

Improving GA safety

BRUCE LANDSBERG
President, AOPA Foundation

2013 was a very good year

BRUCE LANDSBERG

serves as
president of the
AOPA Foundation-which funds
the work of the Air
Safety Institute.

18 | AOPA PILOT October 2014

WITH APOLOGIES TO FRANK SINATRA, 2013 was a very
good year. It's way too early to declare victory in the
decades-long struggles to improve general aviation
safety, but 2013 was very good in one segment: a drop
in non-commercial fixed-wing fatal accidents. It's the
perennial trouble spot where many bad things happen
and for all the wrong reasons. The Air Safety Institute
(ASI) produced a 2013 early look scorecard, which we'll
get to momentarily.
Also just published is the twenty-third annual Joseph
T. Nall Report, which is the annual state-of-the-union
review of GA catastrophes (www.aopa.org/nallreport).
It honors the memory of an NTSB member who died
in a Venezuela airplane crash in 1989. The NTSB has
now released final data for 2011, which allows a detailed
update of the not-so-recent past.
ASI has expanded the report considerably over the
years to focus on the real issues, which guide us in producing seminars, online courses, and dialogue with
regulatory agencies and the media on what's happening
and what should be done-not what's politically expedient, convenient, or the accident du jour.
Here's the good news from the score card: Fatal noncommercial fixed-wing accidents dropped from 216 in
2012 to 165 in 2013. Disclaimer: Last year's numbers are
still preliminary and so there may be some additions, but
unlikely to be of great statistical significance. Alas, one
year does not a trend make, so we'll have to see how this
year plays out. Y'all keep being careful.
Rate numbers are squishier because while the FAA
makes a valiant effort to estimate, it's still based on pilot
self-reports of flight hours. There's some similarity to
fish tales about the one that got away. Since flying hours
are down, the rate has remained fairly constant this
decade at roughly 1.2 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours.
So, where do light GA pilots have difficulty according to the Nall Report for 2011? Takeoff and landing
usually aren't fatal. It's the crunch, bounce, porpoise,
slide-off-the-side, or the end-of-the-runway occurrence. The mishaps occur at slow speed in a mostly
obstacle-free area and while it's hard on the hardware,
the occupants generally just suffer from embarrassment. This accounts for about 50 percent of the
accidents.
Power loss after takeoff, however, has a significantly
higher fatality rate. There's little room to maneuver
and while the impossible turn isn't always impossible,

there must be enough altitude and skill to pull it off.
That has to be practiced and briefed ahead of time.
If the turn cannot be executed we need to find something soft and cheap to hit, which is not always possible
around encroached airports. What causes power loss
after takeoff? Usually it's a fuel issue and the solution is
simple-sufficient quantity, quality, and fuel selectors
properly positioned. Once in a while there's a legitimate
mechanical reason, but that's unlikely in a well-maintained engine. The italics are an important qualifier.
Another fatality producer is loss of control. That's
a catchall category ranging from low-altitude stalls to
buzz jobs to VFR pilots losing control in instrument
conditions. Each one of those problem areas requires
a different intervention strategy.
Weather is probably the hardest area to address
from a knowledge and risk-assessment standpoint. It
accounted for 18 percent of fatal accidents and had the
highest likelihood of causing death. The aircraft usually
hits the ground going very fast and out of control. Pick
your poison: Loss of control in IMC, thunder, or ice.
It's all bad and largely avoidable, provided one doesn't
get "mission mindset." What's needed is to realistically
learn about weather and change plans accordingly.
The media, public officials, and regulatory agencies-who know better-frequently compare GA safety
to the airlines. It's an invalid comparison-as we've
discussed before. But, and here comes the lecture, personal flying maintains the dubious honor of having the
absolute worst record. Understandable, but should we
accept it? Especially when you know who is first to the
scene of the accident.
Two of the biggest human factors are ignorance
and arrogance. The first can be addressed with ongoing
education. It starts in primary training and continues
throughout a flying career. Learning to fly well is a lifetime commitment. The smarter you become, the greater
your aviation longevity.
Arrogance is much tougher to solve. Overestimating
one's skill and judgment is occasionally embarrassing
in life's other activities but it can be lethal in aircraft.
Helping risk-tolerant people understand that rules and
procedures were established because other risk-tolerant
people came to grief is an ongoing challenge. We need to
be patient, persistent, and persuasive.
AOPA
WEB www.airsafetyinstitute.org

http://www.aopa.org/nallreport http://www.airsafetyinstitute.org

AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2014

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