16 March 2007
The US NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) revealed this week that the number of aviation accidents in the USA in 2006 were the lowest in the 40 years that it has been keeping records
The board says that there were 1,515 GA accidents in 2006. 303 of them were fatal, and there were 698 fatalities. The drop in numbers is partly due to a fall in hours flown, which the NTSB estimates was last year at its lowest since the early 90s (2006: 22.8 million flight hours; 1994 (for instance): 22.2 million flight hours). The 2006 figure was 1.32 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours, 6.64 accidents per 100,000 flight hours.
See <a href=”http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Stats.htm” target=”_blank”>the NTSB statistic site</a> for details.
Final accident rate figures for the UK haven’t been calculated yet as the CAA tells us that ‘the GA utilisation (hours flown) for 2006 has not yet been compiled’.
However, the CAA did report that ‘there were 16 fatal GA accidents involving UK registered aircraft in 2006, including gliders; with a total of 19 fatalities, one serious injury and one minor injury. Of these accidents seven involved aeroplanes, of which two occurred overseas. There were five accidents involving gliders: One of these accidents was a paraglider and another was a mid-air collision involving two gliders. One accident involved a gyroplane and the remainder were three microlight accidents.”
