Art of the possible

If you operated in general aviation in 2021, you were part of achieving the safest flying year ever. If unofficial estimates hold, we blew by 2020’s performance with a 29-percent year-over-year improvement that set new thresholds for the art of the possible in GA safety. Often, adversity is a stimulus for record-setting performance, and it certainly was for all of us who flew, controlled, and maintained GA airplanes in 2021.

The General Aviation Joint Steering Committee (GAJSC) reviewed initial FAA data that estimated a fiscal year 2021 fatal accident rate at 0.73 per 100,000 flight hours, down from 0.98 in fiscal year 2020. Historically, these initial estimates are accurate to within +/- 0.02 points when activity levels and raw accident numbers are tuned to finalize the rate (see “State of Safety,” p. 104”). Even at the most pessimistic end of any final adjustments, it was a record-setting year by a substantial margin.

Turning in a 29-percent improvement in our safety performance during a pandemic year is astonishing. Our flying environment over the past two years involved many elements known to increase flying risk: societal turmoil, social unrest, shakeup in our work and home routines, and financial and job stresses. Some of us lost colleagues or family members to a ubiquitous, stealthy, and confusing disease. The effect on our mental state can degrade our cockpit performance. Many of us in safety also worried about the combined effects of dormant airplanes and inactive pilots when activity levels dropped so precipitously during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through all of it, from a flying perspective, we didn’t just persevere—we thrived.

Our steady performance in FY 2020 and remarkable performance in FY 2021 has many on the GAJSC wondering if we should step back and re-evaluate our goal of reducing the fatal accident rate by 10 percent over 10 years. Perhaps we should set even more ambitious goals. Before we do that, we should work to try and understand why we did so well in fiscal year 2021. The GAJSC established a formal working group to try and answer that question. It won’t be easy. Tracking the accident that didn’t happen has always been an elusive effort.

Pilot behavior may provide a clue. AOPA Air Safety Institute material was accessed a record 12 million times over the past year, a 40 percent year-over-year increase. Subscriptions to our YouTube channel jumped by close to 50 percent. My safety colleagues also saw more use of their content. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that in a record-setting flying safety year, we observed record-setting consumption of safety and training material.

We also experienced a run on avionics upgrades. The Aircraft Electronics Association reported substantial increases in sales and installation of equipment in 2019 and early 2020, which meant more airplanes flying with modern and more reliable instrumentation in 2020 and 2021. Has anyone tried to find open time in an avionics shop lately? Good luck. Any I’ve contacted are months behind. Perhaps a contributing factor to our safer flying is more modern and reliable equipment.

An important ingredient in safe flying is proficient pilots. And during the pandemic, we flew! At the onset of the health crisis, we paused to assess. Could we fly? Should we fly? Was it responsible? After a brief period of inactivity, we responded swiftly and aggressively. Activity at the top 77 GA airports around the nation rebounded to levels higher than pre-pandemic activity. On many days, more Cessna 172s were in the skies than Boeing 737s. Most training schools we spoke with reported full schedules with business exceeding pre-pandemic levels. In 2021, the AOPA You Can Fly team saw an increase in the creation of flying clubs. It seems pilots capitalized on the privacy, safety, and convenience of flying GA during the uncertainty and chaos of a national crisis.

There’s no single reason for the record safety performance we all delivered in fiscal year 2021. Our behavior patterns indicate we were addressing all five principles of ASI’s safety model: knowledge, training, proficiency, equipment, and culture. We’ll keep making progress by hammering away at all five points, at the micro level, in how we fly and maintain our airplanes, and at the macro level, as an industry, prioritizing important policies and system upgrades.

We should celebrate a fantastic year for safety under demanding conditions. We should also take a sober view of the harsh reality that we still experienced 192 fatal accidents in which more than 300 people lost their lives. More than 70 percent of these accidents were caused by a pilot mistake of some kind. As far as we’ve come, we still have so much more work to do. Go fly.

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