While air safety experts differ on just how safe last year was, they all agree that the overall trends regarding aviation safety is good.
Pronouncements during 2007 and release of several studies and reports at year end regarding aviation safety all point to successes being made in reducing general aviation accidents, commercial transport hull losses and fatal airline accidents.
For example, the Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office, an independent watchdog group, says last year was one of the safest in aviation history, with the lowest number of crashes in 44 years. The ACRO counts accidents worldwide involving aircraft capable of carrying six passengers plus crew. It said there were 136 serious accidents in 2007 worldwide, the fewest since 1963, and 28 less than in 2006. The group said 965 people died in plane crashes in 2007, a drop of 25 percent from the previous year.
ACRO said 32 percent of the accidents occurred in North America, 23 percent in Asia, 14 percent in Africa and 10 percent in South America. In 2007, there were 34 serious accidents in the United States, 10 in Canada, eight in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Of the 136 aircraft losses, 100 were turboprops or piston-engined, while the rest were turbofans. Four Airbus aircraft were lost (one A300, two A320s and one A340) while eight Boeing jetliners were destroyed, all of which were Boeing 737s.
No major accidents occurred in Europe during 2007, but three accidents caused the death of more than 100 people. The TAM A320 crash in Sao Paulo on July 17 took 199 lives, while the Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 loss in Douala on May 5 had 114 fatalities. The crash of an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 off Ujung Pandang on Jan. 1 had 102 deaths.
Earlier in the year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that the fatal U.S. air carrier accident rate has been cut by 65 percent over the past decade. The FAA’s goal was to reduce the fatal accident rate 80 percent over ten years.
The deadline for achieving the accident reduction goal was midnight Sept. 29, the end of the fiscal year 2007. An accident rate of about 65 percent was achieved, one fatal accident in about 4.5 million departures, from one in nearly two million in 1997. Expressed a different way, the U.S. recorded 0.223 total accidents and 0.018 fatal accidents, per 100,000 departures.
Robert A. Sturgell, the acting federal aviation administrator, said recently that in the past ten years, the commercial fatal accident rate has dropped 57 percent. In the past three years, the U.S. averaged approximately two fatal accidents per year and 28 deaths per year. “While any loss of life is tragic, this statistic is remarkable, given that there are well over 100,000 aircraft operations per day,” said Sturgell.
“This is the golden age of safety, the safest period in the safest mode in the history of the world,” said Marion Blakey before giving up the top job at the FAA.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said 2006 was the safest year ever for world aviation with 1.0 accidents per 1.5 million departures and 0.65 fatal accidents for every one million departures.
Last November, Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s director general and CEO, noted at an international safety forum held in Washington, DC, that “safety is a growing challenge. It is our number one priority and without public confidence in safety we don’t have a viable business. With an industry growing at 5-6% per year, we must reduce the accident rate.
“Just to keep the same absolute numbers, our targets are much more ambitious – like cutting the accident rate in half over the decade from 1996 to 2006. We achieved that, and 2006 was our safest year ever. But this year looks like it will be a big step backwards.
Preliminary results for 2007 show an accident rate of 0.9, taking us back to 2002 levels.
“Some areas are doing very well with zero accidents in the Middle East and North Africa. IATA’s work in Russia and the CIS helped to turn the worst safety record of 2006 into zero accidents so far this year. Europe and North America also saw improvements. North Asia saw its perfect safety record come to an end with one hull loss, but at 0.72 it is still better than the global average. China still has zero accidents so far.
“So where is the problem? It is concentrated in three main areas: in Brazil, where some tragic accidents pushed the Latin American hull loss rate to 2.52; in Asia-Pacific, where accidents in Indonesia increased the accident rate to 3.27; and in Africa where a more dispersed and unrelated set of accidents increased the accident rate from 4.31 to 6.04.
“We are a global industry and flying must be safe everywhere. We established transparent partnerships with Brazil and Indonesia to help improve the situation with practical measures. The issues are similar in Africa – we are opening an office in Nigeria to assist the government. But the problem crosses more borders. So we are working multi-laterally to help airlines move forward on the agenda set by ICAO’s Safety for Africa conference. The common theme in our tactical approach to safety is cooperation between industry and government. We are in this together: A safe industry is our shared top priority,” stated the head of Geneva-based IATA.
Meanwhile, AOPA released its 2007 Joseph T. Nall Report, its annual analysis of general aviation accidents. The report shows that general aviation accidents are continuing a downward trend, with the number of accidents per 100,000 flight hours decreasing from 7.19 in 1997 to an all-time low of 6.32 in 2006, while the fatal accident rate dropped 7.4 percent during the same time frame.
The Nall report noted that maneuvering flight accidents dipped significantly from 80 (33 percent) fatal accidents in 2005 to 54 (25 percent) in 2006. Fatal descent and approach accidents, on the other hand, increased from 25 (10 percent) in 2005 to 41 (19 percent) in 2006.
The report said that pilot-related weather mishaps held steady between 2005 and 2006. AOPA believes the long-term trend for weather-related accidents will increase as more cross-country flying is undertaken. Finally, personal flying, as compared to business or instructional flight, continues to show disproportionate accident involvement.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, say the number of airline mishaps attributed to pilot error significantly declined between 1983 and 2002. While the overall rate of air carrier mishaps remained steady during the period, the proportion of mishaps involving pilot error decreased 40 percent and the rate of mishaps related to a poor decision-making declined 71 percent. The researchers said the decline was due to better training and improved technology.
Finally, the Annual Aviation Safety Report from Ascend, a private firm that tracks accidents involving passenger-carrying aircraft, said passenger fatalities fell by 20 percent between 2006 and 2007, adding that both passenger deaths and the number of fatal accidents last year were well below long-term trends.
During 2007, there were 631 passenger fatalities, 159 fewer than in 2006. The figure is below the average for the decade of 719, and is a significant improvement on the 1990’s average of 954 passenger fatalities a year.
By Ascend’s count, there were 15 fatal accidents last year involving passengers, two more than in 2006. The average number of fatal accidents since 2000 is 16, versus 24 in the 1990s.