On August 6, 2015, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a press release reporting a “slight increase in fatal general aviation accidents” from 2013 to 2014. Reaction in the aviation press was predictably gloomy. One magazine lamented that the jump from a reported 222 fatal accidents in 2013 to 253 the following year occurred “despite major efforts at the FAA and within industry.”
That’s one way to look at it. But context is important. The year 2013 saw an astonishing improvement from the 40 years that preceded it. Using the NTSB’s published figures, the total number of GA accidents dropped by an unheard-of 17 percent from 2012, and the number of fatal accidents fell more than 18 percent. Compared to any other year, 2014 would have looked very good: 16 fewer fatal accidents and 18 fewer deaths than the previous record lows. But because it followed 2013, its safety record was only the second-best in modern history. (And by “modern,” we mean “since sometime before World War II.” We can’t say exactly when, as our records only go back to 1940—whose total of 359 fatal GA accidents was 42 percent higher than 2014’s.)
This is the time for someone to make the entirely valid point that decreasing accident counts would be the natural consequence of diminishing flight activity. Indeed, that’s exactly why accident rates—the average number per 100,000 hours of flight time—hadn’t budged for the preceding 15 years, even as the numbers of accidents tended to decline.
That doesn’t explain the 2013 results, though. The number of hours flown did fall a little more, but less than 7 percent. That 18-percent reduction in fatal accidents resulted primarily from the underlying rate falling 12.6 percent to the lowest value recorded since we began tracking that measure. The FAA’s 2014 activity survey, published after the NTSB’s press release, suggests that overall GA activity is finally stabilizing—and that year’s fatal-accident rate was identical to 2012’s.
There’s no question that GA safety still has ample room for improvement. Still, impatience over the lack of progress during the previous decade shouldn’t stop us from recognizing encouraging signs once we finally see them.
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