71% of accidents caused by pilot error

[Geico266]

Wow. ??

His graduation class was 2.

 

[Anthony]

Interesting. Lifetime to date I have known 5 people who died in auto accidents. I knew four who died in plane crashes before finishing sophomore year in college and many more since.

But you're in the business, right?

 

[wabower]

Not for the first 55 years. Only one (a V-35 pilot and retired lawyer in my hangar row) that I can remember since then.

But you're in the business, right?

 

[wabower]

And the valedictorian was the one who died in the crash?

His graduation class was 2.

 

[jnmeade]

When the FAA sees big numbers you can assume they are going to react assertively.

I would amend that to suggest that when the FAA sees big publicity or big political pressure they will react assertively. Either of those will follow big numbers, but I don't think big numbers by themselves take action above the cut line. The feeling of pressure on the FAA does.
This is a government thing. The number of incidents (not fatalities) in confined space grain handling faciltiies in the last 34 years is 891, an average of about 26 per year, about 5 per year of which involve kids less than 16. The government is makeing a big push and spending a lot of money to try to reduce the 26 incidents. For that and for NTSB "top ten", my first question is whether that is the best place to save a lot of lives with whatever money the government has to spend. Reduce auto deaths? Why, shut your mouth! That might affect the general, voting public, not a small population that can be marginalized.
On a side note, runway incursions are most often reported where? My pure guess is they are reported at towered faciilties or when there is an accident or incident that comes to the NTSB or FAA attention. My point is that targeting runway incursions is going to get two and probably three sets of humans involved. The one in the tower, the one in the airplane, and possibly another in a second airplane or vehicle. Lots more fun to shoot at a covey of birds than one, and more satisfying when you can investigate two or three at a time instead of one. Yes, I am old and cynical.

 

[Mike5250]

Interesting CFIT(75) has more fatalities than engine/powerplant failures(63). And a good part of people scared of GA are afraid of the single engine that will stop running.

 

[wanttaja]

And everyone accepts the NTSB determination without question?

I concentrate on homebuilt accident statistics, but I occasionally compare them to a similar set of production-type aircraft. The set I use is a combination of Cessna 172s and Cessna 210s, with instruction accidents omitted.

Here are my results for ten years (1998-2007) in descending order:

Pilot Miscontrol 52.1%
Fuel Exhaustion 7.4%
Other 6.6%
Undetermined Loss of Power 5.2%
VFR to IFR 4.7%
Other Mechanical 4.4%
Maintenance Error 4.1%
Engine Mechanical 3.6%
Manuevering at low alt 2.8%
Fuel Starvation 1.8%
Midair Collision 1.8%
Carb Ice 1.3%
Inadequate Preflight 1.2%
Fuel System 0.9%
Fuel Contamination 0.8%
Loss of Control (Unknown) 0.6%
Undetermined 0.5%
Manufacturer Error 0.3%

"General Pilot Error" is stick-and-rudder mistakes by the pilot...undershoot, overshoot, loss of control, etc. "Other" is a catch-all for a number of accident types, such as animals on the runway, pedestrians, hand-prop accidents, etc.

If you add up all the pilot-induced cases, I get about 74% due to pilot error. I count pilot error slightly differently from the NTSB...the NTSB will attribute a post-engine-failure accident to pilot error if they feel the pilot should have successfully landed, and I attribute these to the failed component. Also, again, I omit accidents during instruction. With those, I think the NTSB figures are probably pretty close.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Oh - some examples:
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120812X03834&key=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120609X71211&key=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120531X11644&key=1

Or pretty much any example of a plane encountering an unexpected wind gust of any severity RIGHT at the moment of touchdown. Not much can be done, but god forbid the NTSB properly classify anything as an unavoidable accident.

Nick,

I read all those reports, and I agree with the NTSB. You can't control wind gusts, you can most definitely control the airplane in response. I doubt any of those wind gusts were truly beyond the capacity of the airplane to be controlled, and even if they were, the pilot chose to land in those conditions rather than choose an airport and a runway more suitable to those conditions.

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20070313X00285&key=1

Yep. I'd still call that pilot error... Anyone who's going to be in close proximity to moose should know that they'll charge. Hell, I learned that before I drove a truck in moose country. And a moose is big enough to seriously mess up a truck, so a helicopter is certainly no match for one.

Just because the final link in the accident chain is difficult or impossible for a pilot to control does not mean that the links in the chain leading to the final one aren't the pilot's fault.

 

[steingar]

Anyone who thinks that people who fly once a week or even once a month are going to do everything perfectly every time haven't learned much about human cognition or psychology.

 

[Henning]

Anyone who thinks that people who fly once a week or even once a month are going to do everything perfectly every time haven't learned much about human cognition or psychology.

Right, so best to bank against it anyway you can; technology helps you there.

 

[Jaybird180]

I don't personally know anyone that died in a GA accident. Half of my graduating high school class is dead from driving accidents.

Were you home schooled or something?

 

[Jaybird180]

Oh - some examples:
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120812X03834&key=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120609X71211&key=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120531X11644&key=1

Or pretty much any example of a plane encountering an unexpected wind gust of any severity RIGHT at the moment of touchdown. Not much can be done, but god forbid the NTSB properly classify anything as an unavoidable accident.

The first one sounds to me like...

The pilot's inadequate crosswind landing technique, failure to hold aileron into the wind and probable initial landing touchdown with too much forward speed

 

[Ghery]

Fuel exhaustion is the number one cause of engine failure.

I thought it was CFIs in the right seat.

 

[kontiki]

I have been wondering lately about the mechanical safety of general aviation, so I decided to pull some numbers from the NTSB(*edit*, originally posted as FAA) and figure out the percentage of accidents that are not due to pilot error.

The data I used from the NTSB is attached, for the curious. Of the 3,103 GA accidents between 2007 and 2009, 904 of them were not due to pilot error: 29%. That number isn't completely correct, however, as I lumped the "Other" and "Unknown" categories into the "Not Pilot Error" numbers, which isn't going to be accurate.

If we were all perfect pilots and never made an error, I would guess that flying GA would be far safer than driving? By how much?

I always keep in mind that without a pilot nothing happens with an airplane. The pilot really does make everything happen. When you're responsible for so much, you're also responsible when things go wrong.