The National Transportation Safety Board late last week released its preliminary aviation accident statistics for 2008, showing improvements in some industry sectors but increased accident rates in others. Fatalities among on-demand operations rose as did the accident rate for general aviation, but the number of accidents involving Part 121 and Part 135 carriers were not alarming.
“While the overall aviation safety record in the United States is among the best in the world, the 2008 accident statistics reveal a mixed picture,” said NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker. “We are particularly concerned with the spike in fatalities in on-demand air charter operations. There’s a lot of room for improvement in this area.”
On-demand flight operations, which include air medical, air taxi and air tour flights, logged over 3.6 million flight hours and had 56 accidents, killing 66 people, the highest number of fatalities since 2000. There were only 43 fatalities in 2007. But the accident rate per 100,000 flight hours (1.52) remained virtually unchanged from 2007 (1.54).
Those fatal accidents include the loss of emergency medical services rotorcraft. Nationwide for the year, four EMS crashes took 15 lives. In March, a chartered Pilatus PC-12 turboprop crashed in Butte, MT resulting in 14 deaths, including several children.
The number of accidents involving large commercial carriers (Part 121) was 28 in both 2008 and 2007. In both scheduled and non-scheduled services, the airlines carried 753 million passengers on over 10.8 million flights without a passenger fatality.
In 2008, Part 135 regional air carriers that typically operate smaller turboprop aircraft made 581,000 flights, logging over 290,000 hours. These operators had seven accidents, none of which resulted in fatalities. This was an increase from three accidents in 2007.
In general aviation, there were 1,559 accidents, 275 of which involved fatalities, killing a total of 495, one fewer than the previous year. But the GA accident rate per 100,000 flight hours was 7.11, up from 6.92 in 2007. In the last 20 years, the highest accident rate was 9.08 in 1994; the lowest rate was 6.33 in 2006.